Towards Senior-Robot Interaction: Reactive Robot Dog Gestures
Chunyang Meng, Eduardo B. Sandoval, Ricardo Sosa, Francisco Cruz

TL;DR
This paper presents a senior-oriented quadruped robot system with intuitive gesture control and expressive social gestures, validated through simulation and real-world tests, aiming to enhance social interaction for elderly companionship.
Contribution
It introduces a gesture-based control module and a curriculum reinforcement learning approach for expressive robot dog gestures, tailored for senior social interaction.
Findings
Over 95% success rate in simulation for learned gestures
Feasibility of social gestures validated on real robot
Identified sim-to-real challenges in joint compliance and balance
Abstract
As the global population ages, many seniors face the problem of loneliness. Companion robots offer a potential solution. However, current companion robots often lack advanced functionality, while task-oriented robots are not designed for social interaction, limiting their suitability and acceptance by seniors. Our work introduces a senior-oriented system for quadruped robots that allows for more intuitive user input and provides more socially expressive output. For user input, we implemented a MediaPipe-based module for hand gesture and head movement recognition, enabling control without a remote. For output, we designed and trained robotic dog gestures using curriculum-based reinforcement learning in Isaac Gym, progressing from simple standing to three-legged balancing and leg extensions, and more. The final tests achieved over 95\% success on average in simulation, and we validated a…
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Taxonomy
TopicsSocial Robot Interaction and HRI · Robotic Locomotion and Control · Prosthetics and Rehabilitation Robotics
