IJIRO: a Robot which Expresses Emotions Reacting a User's Actions

Abstract

Ijiro is a robot which expresses emotions reacting a user's actions. Boldly, it consists of a matrix LED, an accelerometer and a cylinder case. Ijiro doesn't have any actuators. Then it isn't able to move itself. A user, however, can have it touching, lying, standing, swinging, hanging and so on and it senses a user's actions. Then, it expresses emotions with face in the display and voice from the speaker. For example, if a user swings it softly, it reacts smile back. But if a user swings it roughly, it reacts angry back.So, users will feel it like a baby. It, actually, is characterized baby's emotions based on cognitive science. Also, Ijiro's shape is designed a cylinder. It is considered to get various user's actions because only a cylinder can be stood, lied, rolled and so on in primitive shapes. Ijiro has been developed to make a friendship through the emotional interaction between people and machines. We showed it to people at our school museum and a kinder garden. As the result, we saw many people was laughing and surprising with Ijiro's interaction. Now we continue to improve it using with an OLED display, an internal speaker and so on.