Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : May 10, 2017 - May 13, 2017
The ability of walking together is important for a robot which lives with a person. Walking itself is good for our health and it strengthens the impression of a robot as a companion not an object. A robot has to walk with various people from children to elderly people. Based on mother-infant relationship, we developed the walking system that a robot can walk with a person by following him or her or being navigated with holding hands. We implemented our system into a communication robot Pepper and evaluated the system on its usability and impression for children. This study contributes to a prototype of the walking together system for a future robot.