Emotion savvy Health Care Robot

At the Research Centre for Computers, communication and Social Innovation (RECCSI) at La Trobe University in Melborne, Australia, scientists and researchers from La Trobe University Melbourne and Kyoto University’s Graduate School of Informatics in Japan develop emotionally intelligent computer systems. The research centre was launched in March 2009 in collaboration with NEC Corporation (NEC) and Kyoto University. The first project is an emotionally intelligent health care robot.

Robot as car navigator

NEC Corp demonstrated the use of its "PaPeRo" home robot as a human machine interface (HMI) for inputting information, such as the destination and purpose of an outing, into a car navigation system and other devices. The demonstration was performed at AT International 2008 in june at Makuhari Messe in Chiba Prefecture, Japan.

The purpose of utilizing PaPeRo as an HMI is to improve user convenience through the use of a home robot equipped with voice recognition and camera functions, instead of using a touch panel or other devices, which are usually used to input information into a car navigation system. For example, when a user in house tells the robot that he is "going to Yokohama on a date," the robot recognizes that person's voice and uploads the information to the server via wireless LAN, etc. The server performs an arithmetical operation on the uploaded information in consideration of the dialogue history between the robot and the user, the knowledge information inputted to the robot, the season, the time, etc. Then, information on the best route for the user to go to Yokohama on a date is calculated, and the result is sent to the user's car navigation system, etc and displayed on the screen. Therefore, the user only has to get in the car and talk to the robot to reach his destination by the best route.

Nec introduces Mini PaPeRo

According to a press release from May 2007, NEC has developed a "mini version" of its PaPeRo conversation robot. The 25 cm tall and 2,5 kg heavy robot can move around and is able to perform speech recognition, speech synthesis, sound source detection and face recognition.