HuggieBot uses science to deliver hugs
WeirdNews
HuggieBot uses science to deliver hugs
(Web Desk) – The Max Planck Institute for intelligence designed a robot for delivering the perfect hug, called HuggieBot 3.0 as it is the third in its iteration.
Hugging and emotions are not the types of things that cross our minds when thinking about technology and robot but the Max Planck Institute developed a robot precisely on the phenomena of delivering perfect hugs.
Alexis E. Block and her colleagues were working on his hug bot project for many years till now, finally, they created HuggieBot 3.0 which could give hugs like real human beings, comforting and natural, for those who are lonely or hug someone who isn’t nearby.
The makers of HuggieBot 3.0 say that the human-sized robot responds to all intra-hug gestures of users. A pair of Kinova JACO arms affixed to a special metal frame, chosen for being humanoid, quiet, and secure, are used by the sophisticated robot to provide hugs. As a hug is being given, a barometric pressure sensor and microphone in the artificial breast sense human touch and start sending information to a Robot Operating System (ROS)-based computer housed in the HuggieBot 3.0’s 3D-printed head via an Arduino Mega microcontroller board.
The team trained a machine learning system that can recognize and categorise a variety of movements made during a hug and react correctly using feedback from 512 real people across 32 sessions. The HuggieBot 3.0 can tap or pat someone’s back, move slightly vertically, remain steady, and apply varying amounts of pressure when squeezing someone.
Our behavior algorithm balances exploration and exploitation to create a natural, spontaneous robot that offers reassuring hugs, not maximizing human acceptability for each robot motion, which would lead to the robot simply squeezing the user, the creators of HuggieBot 3.0 noted in a recent paper.
While pursuing a Master’s in robotics, Alexis E. Block began developing the first HuggieBot in 2016. The initial version was based on six “hugging commandments,” such as the requirement that the robot is soft and warm and capable of initiating and ending an embrace on its own.
The HuggieBot 2.0 took the project a step further by integrating haptic perception to give adaptive embracing, but the 3.0 iteration is the most advanced version yet, with five extra hugging commandments designed to deliver a human-like hugging experience.
In a recent experiment with 16 participants who had already tested earlier incarnations of the HuggieBot, 12 of those who hugged the robot for longer periods of time said they felt “much better understood” by the machine and that it was “nicer to embrace” than earlier versions.
The HuggieBot 3.0 isn’t perfect, and the designers acknowledge that it isn’t exactly like embracing a real person just yet, but a fourth version that should have better hug positions and techniques is already under development. They believe that one-day HuggieBot will perfectly capture the experience of receiving a hug from a human.
