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Development of a Socially Interactive System with Whole-Body Movements for BHR-4

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Abstract

For a long time, humans have been communicating with others through voice, facial expressions, and body movements. If a humanoid robot has a human-habitual, natural, and human-like interactive form, it tends to be accepted by humans. To date, the majority of the existing humanoid robots have had difficulty in interacting with humans in a human-like way. This study focuses on this issue and develops a socially interactive system for enhancing the natural communication ability of a humanoid robot. The system, which is implemented in an android robot, BHR-4, features hearing, voice conversation, and facial and body emotional expression capabilities. Then, a full-body social motion planner for a humanoid robot is presented. The objective of this planner is to control the whole-body motion of the robot in a way similar to that of humans. Finally, experiments are conducted on the robot regarding its interactions with humans in a pure indoor environment. It is expected that the socially interactive system can enhance the natural communication ability of an android robot. The results of the experiments show that the combination of verbal behavior with facial expressions and body movements is better than verbal behavior alone, verbal behavior combined with facial expressions, or verbal behavior combined with body movements.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under grants 61320106012, 61375103, 61533004, 61273348, 61175077, and 61321002, in part by the 863 Program of China under  Grant  2014AA041602, Grant 2015AA042305, and Grant 2015AA043202, in part by the Key Technologies Research and Development Program under Grant 2015BAF13B01 and Grant 2015BAK35B01, in part by the Beijing Natural Science Foundation under Grant 4154084, and in part by the “111” Project under Grant B08043.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Intelligent Robotics Institute, School of Mechatronical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China

    Gan Ma, Junyao Gao, Zhangguo Yu, Xuechao Chen, Qiang Huang & Yunhui Liu

  2. Humanoid Robotics Institute, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan

    Gan Ma

  3. The Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong

    Yunhui Liu

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  1. Gan Ma
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  2. Junyao Gao
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  3. Zhangguo Yu
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  4. Xuechao Chen
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  5. Qiang Huang
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  6. Yunhui Liu
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Correspondence to Junyao Gao.

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Ma, G., Gao, J., Yu, Z. et al. Development of a Socially Interactive System with Whole-Body Movements for BHR-4. Int J of Soc Robotics 8, 183–192 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-015-0330-y

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