Robotic companions offer a unique combination of embodiment and computation which open many new interesting opportunities in the field of pediatric care. As these new technologies are developed, we must consider the central research questions of how such systems should be designed and what the appropriate applications for such systems are. In this paper we present the Huggable, a robotic companion in the form factor of a teddy bear and outline a series of studies we are planning to run using the Huggable in a pediatric care unit.

This paper describes the hardware and algorithms for a realtime social touch gesture recognition system. Early experiments involve a sensate bear test-rig with full body touch sensing, sensor visualization and gesture recognition capabilities. Algorithms are based on real humans interacting with a plush bear. In developing a preliminary gesture library with thirteen symbolic gestures and eight touch subtypes, we have taken the first steps toward a robotic touch API, showing that the huggable robot behavior system will be able to stream currently active sensors to detect regional social gestures and local sub-gestures in realtime. The system demonstrates the infrastructure to detect three types of touching: social touch, local touch, and sensor-level touch.

Robots as an embodied, multi-modal technology have great potential to be used as a new type of communication device. In this paper we outline our development of the Huggable robot as a semi-autonomous robot avatar for two specific types of remote interaction — family communication and education. Through our discussion we highlight how we have applied six important elements in our system to allow for the robot to function as a richly embodied communication channel.

As robots become an everyday part of the complicated environment of the human world it will be important for such systems to feature a full body sense of touch capable of detecting a wide variety of tactile inputs. Such "sensitive skins" can provide much benefit in human robot interaction, specifically in the realm of robotic companions for therapeutic or service applications. In this paper we present a set of design criteria for how such "skins" should be designed. Based on this criteria, a "skin" which features temperature, force, and electric field sensing is described. Results from early experiments with this skin show how the sensors of the multi-modal skin complement each other and allow the distinction between social and affective classes of touch to be distinguished from touch with physical objects

The sense of touch is one of the most important sensory system in humans. This paper describes an initial step toward the realization of a fully "sensitive skin" for robots in which somatic sensors of varying modalities such as touch, temperature, pain, and proprioception combine, as if letters in an alphabet, to create a more vivid depiction of the world and foster richer human robot interactions. We have developed a new "sensitive" hand, covered in a lifelike silicone "skin" to explore the importance of touch and the formation of the somatic alphabet in the context of our humanoid robot, Leonardo. From initial tests the populations of these sensors show the potential for similar performance to both the mechanoreceptors in human skin and the cortical neurons in the somatosensory cortex.

A fully "sensitive skin" can be thought of as the ultimate goal for the application of somatic sensors. This paper describes further work in the creation of a "somatic alphabet" for humanoid robotics. Populations of individual force sensing resistors are combined into receptive fields. This paper details the algorithms used to infer direction of motion of the centroid of a stimulus as well as orientation.

This work motivates interactive robot theatre as an interesting test bed to explore research issues in the development of sociable robots and to investigate the relationship between autonomous robots and intelligent environments. We present the implementation of our initial exploration in this area highlighting three core technologies. First, an integrated show control software development platform for the design and control of an intelligent stage. Second, a stereo vision system that tracks multiple features on multiple audience participants in real-time. Third, an interactive, autonomous robot performer with natural and expressive movement that combines techniques from character animation and robot control.