Production of Character Animation in a Home Robot: A Case Study of LOVOT

Abstract

This is a case study focused on the development of LOVOT, a consumer home robot that went on sale in 2019. Since its unveiling in 2018, approximately 20,000 people have visited the LOVOT demonstration event as of the end of July 2019. In practical terms, LOVOT lives at home with the user long-term, similar to a companion animal; LOVOT performs continuous natural motion for user comfort. We applied movements using professional animator techniques based on the principles of traditional animation to LOVOT. We have identified specific practical techniques in home robot animation through iterative prototyping in our synergetic development of character animation techniques and tools. In this paper, we introduce our practical methods to develop many behaviors in a single robotic agent and is the collaborative efforts of a group of people with diverse professional backgrounds. Furthermore, we summarize how traditional techniques of character animation were applied, and new techniques were required from the perspective of professional animators.

Is two cuter than one? number and relationship effects on the feeling of kawaii toward social robots

“…Testing with different types of objects is critical to examine how closely the current knowledge is applicable to various targets. For example, more human-like robots like androids [54][55][56] or cuter pet-like robots [3,57] might induce different kawaii feelings. In addition, the number of targets with different appearances (e.g., not twins, different objects, and robots) and displaying various relationships (e.g., a leader and followers) will influence feelings of kawaii differently.…”

“…In the context of the latter and the kawaii feeling of robots, researchers focused on applying to the appearance design of robots [34][35][36] the baby schema concept, which effectively raised the perceived feelings of kawaii. In fact, recent commercial products in social robot categories are designed to have cute appearances [1][2][3].…”

“…Social robots that interact with people in daily environments have become popular worldwide, such as Paro [1], AIBO [2], and LOVOT [3]. A common design policy of these robots is the Japanese word kawaii, which has become a very popular word [4,5].…”

A Phase‐Change Memristive Reinforcement Learning for Rapidly Outperforming Champion Street‐Fighter Players

“…[12][13][14] Moreover, naturalistic movements of simulated characters have been studied in the computergraphics community since the early days of animation, and enabling machines to produce animal-type agile maneuvers has been a goal of robotics research. [15][16][17][18] The processes that influence the design of intelligent embodied systems are still not well understood, although it has been acknowledged that these systems also require the integration of multiple control levels. [19][20][21][22] Leveraging large-sized, scaled, and simulated characters, research on autonomous movement sports has accelerated in recent years.…”