Untethered robotic play for repetitive physical tasks

ABSTRACT

Personal robots are an increasingly promising new platform for human entertainment. In particular, socially interactive game playing can be used as a mechanism for imparting knowledge and skills to both the robot and the human player. Simultaneous advances in untethered sensing of human activity has widened the scope for inclusion of natural physical movement in these games. In particular, this places certain human health applications within the purview of entertainment robots. Socially responsive automata equipped with the ability to physically monitor unencumbered humans can help to motivate them to perform suitable repetitions of exercise and physical therapy tasks. We demonstrate this concept with two untethered playful interactions: arm exercise mediated by play with a physical robot, and facial exercise mediated by expression-based operation of a popular video game console.

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