Systems overview of Ono: a DIY reproducible open source social robot

One of the major obstacles in the study of HRI (human-robot interaction) with social robots is the lack of multiple identical robots that allow testing with large user groups. Often, the price of these robots prohibits using more than a handful. A lot of the commercial robots do not possess all the necessary features to perform specific HRI experiments and due to the closed nature of the platform, large modifications are nearly impossible. While open source social robots do exist, they often use high-end components and expensive manufacturing techniques, making them unsuitable for easy reproduction. To address this problem, a new social robotics platform, named Ono, was developed. The design is based on the DIY mindset of the maker movement, using off-the-shelf components and more accessible rapid prototyping and manufacturing techniques. The modular structure of the robot makes it easy to adapt to the needs of the experiment and by embracing the open source mentality, the robot can be easily reproduced or further developed by a community of users. The low cost, open nature and DIY friendliness of the robot make it an ideal candidate for HRI studies that require a large user group

Demonstration of OPSORO : an open platform for social robots

One of the major obstacles in the study of human- robot interaction with social robots is the lack of platforms to allow for tests with large user groups. Often, the price of these robots prohibits using more than a handful of robots. Another factor is that with commercial platforms, the robots do not possess all the necessary features to perform an experiment and due to the closed nature of the platform, extensive modifications are nearly impossible. To address this problem, a new social robotics platform, OPSORO, is presented. The platform uses an innovative modular system design that enables the creation of different embodiments to represent anthropomorphic robots focusing on face-to-face communication. Our goal is to offer a platform for the development of robotic characters, typically within the context of therapeutics or entertainment. OPSORO is a unique system that provides real personalization of social robots

An open platform for the design of social robot embodiments for face- to-face communication

The role of the physical embodiment of a social robot is of key importance during the interaction with humans. If we want to study the interactions we need to be able to change the robot’s embodiment to the nature of the experiment. Nowadays, researchers build one-off robots from scratch or choose to use a commercially available platform. This is justified by the time and budget constraints and the lack of design tools for social robots. In this work, we introduce an affordable open source platform to accelerate the design and production of novel social robot embodiments, with a focus on face-to-face communication. We describe an experiment where Industrial Design students created physical embodiments for 10 new social robots using our platform, detailing the design methodology followed during the different steps of the process. The paper gives an overview of the platform modules used by each of the robots, the skinning techniques employed, as well as the perceived usability of the platform. In summary, we show that our platform (1) enables non-experts to design new social robot embodiments, (2) allows a wide variety of different robots to be built with the same building blocks, and (3) affords itself to being adapted and extended

Systems Overview of Ono: A DIY Reproducible Open Source Social Robot*

Abstract — One of the major obstacles in the study of humanrobot interaction with social robots is the lack of platforms to allow for tests with large user groups. Often, the price of these robots prohibits using more than a handful of robots. Another factor is that with commercial platforms, the robots do not possess all the necessary features to perform an experiment and due to the closed nature of the platform, large modifications are nearly impossible. While open source social robots do exist, they often use the best components that are commercially available, and make use of expensive manufacturing techniques, which make them unsuitable for large-scale studies. To address this problem, a new social robotics platform, named Ono, was developed. The design is based on the DIY mindset of the maker movement, using readily available components and hobbyist accessible rapid prototyping and manufacturing techniques. The modular structure of the robot makes it easy to adapt to the needs of the experiment and by embracing the open source mentality, the robot can be further developed by a community of users. The low cost, open nature and the DIY friendliness of the robot make it an ideal candidate for HRI studies with a large user group. I