Intent expression using eye robot for mascot robot system

TL;DR

This paper introduces an eye robot system for mascot robots that uses fuzzy inference to express intent and convey information importance and certainty through eye movements, enhancing human-robot communication.

Contribution

It presents a novel intent expression method using eye motions modeled in a pleasure-arousal space, improving interpretability of robot communication.

Findings

Eye motions are effectively represented in a pleasure-arousal space.

Fuzzy inference calculates eye state changes based on information importance and certainty.

The system enhances understanding of robot intent in home environments.

Abstract

An intent expression system using eye robots is proposed for a mascot robot system from a viewpoint of humatronics. The eye robot aims at providing a basic interface method for an information terminal robot system. To achieve better understanding of the displayed information, the importance and the degree of certainty of the information should be communicated along with the main content. The proposed intent expression system aims at conveying this additional information using the eye robot system. Eye motions are represented as the states in a pleasure-arousal space model. Changes in the model state are calculated by fuzzy inference according to the importance and degree of certainty of the displayed information. These changes influence the arousal-sleep coordinates in the space that corresponds to levels of liveliness during communication. The eye robot provides a basic interface for the mascot robot system that is easy to be understood as an information terminal for home environments in a humatronics society.