Motion design of interactive small humanoid robot with visual illusion

Abstract

This paper presents a novel method to express motions of a small human-like robotic avatar that can be a portable communication medium: a user can talk with another person while feeling the other's presence at anytime, anywhere. The human-like robotic avatar is expected to express human-like movements; however, there are technical and cost problems in implementing actuators in the small body. The method is to induce illusory motion of the robot's extremities with blinking lights. This idea needs only Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) and avoids the above problems. This paper presents the design of an LED blinking pattern to induce an illusory nodding motion of Elfoid, which is a hand-held tele-operated humanoid robot. A psychological experiment shows that the illusory nodding motion gives a better impression to people than a symbolic blinking pattern. This result suggests that even the illusory motion of a robotic avatar can improve tele-communications. © 2013 ICIC International.