Robotic Blogs

U0204511 Tan Chin Hiong

The PaPeRo is a personal robot researched and developed by NEC Corporation. It is aimed at being able to live in the home together with humans and serve as companion to family members. For this reason, a great emphasis is placed on various basic functions that will allow PaPeRo to interact intelligently with people. These include facial recognition, speech recognition, responsive personality, spontaneous suggestions, autonomous actions and user customization. For example, if a person praises PaPeRo for dancing, then it remembers and will perform a dance when it sees the person again. When PaPeRo is not interacting with people, it can engage in autonomous activities such as walking around the house at will, connecting to the Internet and retrieving the latest news, weather reports, nutrition tips or zodiac fortunes. :D The user can also create new dance steps or teach PaPeRo new greeting messages using a visual basic editor.

The facial recognition and speech recognition technologies can be found from the PaPeRo website. Here, we discuss how PaPeRo overcomes some difficulties faced by recognition algorithms in actual environments. For PaPeRo to be a personal robot living in a household, it must recognize faces and speech well in actual household environments. For example, the lighting conditions may be too dark, the person may be standing too far away, many people may be talking at the same time or there is too much background noise such as the television or radio. The developers at NEC overcome these problems by using “Conditions Detection Feedback”. In addition to feature recognition, PaPeRo also detects problem conditions in its environment and solves the problematic conditions by interacting with the user. For example, if the person speaks too softly, PaPeRo will detect the lack in audio amplitude and response by saying “Speak more loudly”. Problem solving by “interaction” with the user is an effective method and also adds personality to this personal robot.

The Childcare Robot PaPeRo is developed as an extension to the PaPeRo. In addition to the basic features mentioned above, this Childcare Robot is equipped with touch sensors so that even young children can interact with it by touching or patting it. It also has a built-in mobile phone that can utilize TV conferencing features. When a parent calls, PaPeRo will find their child and starts a conversation with him/her. The parent can watch their child playing via PaPeRo’s eyes (CCD camera) and talk to their child using PaPeRo’s speakers and microphones. PaPeRo can serve the role as a home tutor by giving quizzes to the child. The child answers the questions using a special microphone and PaPeRo listens to determine if the answer is correct.

A PaPe Sack that contains an ultrasonic transmitter can be worn by the child so that PaPeRo can always locate where the child is. Safety is a major concern when dealing with young children. In order to avoid obstacles and move around safely, PaPeRo makes use of ultrasonic sensors, front cameras and bumper switches. When it detects objects suddenly coming into its path or comes into contact with an object, PaPeRo’s wheel stop instantly to avoid accidents. Moreover, PaPeRo is designed without any projections or gaps where children’s fingers might get pinched.

While Childcare Robot PaPeRo offers great potential as a personal childcare assistant, there are still many areas for improvement. PaPeRo should not solely be a playmate for the child. It should also be able to protect the child’s safety and well-being. For example, it should be able to detect dangerous situations such as fire or gas leakage. It should also be able to recognize the child’s state of health (e.g. fever, vomiting, etc) and contact the parent/hospital using its built-in mobile phone and TV conferencing feature during emergencies. This will significantly lighten the workload on busy parents in today’s fast-paced society.

PaPeRo's website: http://www.incx.nec.co.jp/robot/english/robotcenter_e.html