Development of a Socially Interactive System with Whole-Body Movements for BHR-4

For a long time, humans have been communicating with others through voice, facial expressions, and body movements. If a humanoid robot has a human-habitual, natural, and human-like interactive form, it tends to be accepted by humans. To date, the majority of the existing humanoid robots have had difficulty in interacting with humans in a human-like way. This study focuses on this issue and develops a socially interactive system for enhancing the natural communication ability of a humanoid robot. The system, which is implemented in an android robot, BHR-4, features hearing, voice conversation, and facial and body emotional expression capabilities. Then, a full-body social motion planner for a humanoid robot is presented. The objective of this planner is to control the whole-body motion of the robot in a way similar to that of humans. Finally, experiments are conducted on the robot regarding its interactions with humans in a pure indoor environment. It is expected that the socially interactive system can enhance the natural communication ability of an android robot. The results of the experiments show that the combination of verbal behavior with facial expressions and body movements is better than verbal behavior alone, verbal behavior combined with facial expressions, or verbal behavior combined with body movements.