Robotics for Children-New Directions in Child Education and Therapy-

田中, 文英; 小嶋, 秀樹; 板倉, 昭二; 開, 一夫

doi:10.7210/jrsj.28.455

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 21 publications

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“…Nowadays, there are active efforts toward developing robots that can widely help humans in daily life, e.g., housework-assistant robots [8], [9] and safe control and educational assistant robots [10], [11]. However, most of these robots are very large and heavy because of their design for elderly or disabled users who lack mobility [7] and require a perfect stand-alone performance [8].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Study on life-supporting balloon walking and jumping robots for the elderly and children

Toyoda

Nishida

2013

Proceedings of the 2013 IEEE/SICE International Symposium on System Integration

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Nowadays, many kinds of life-supporting robots are currently being developed for a wide range of users, particularly the elderly; however, to enhance their performance, such robots have inescapably become large and heavy. Unfortunately, their huge size and weight are factors invoking a sense of fear in users (mental reason) and hindering users' daily activities inside their small house (physical reason). To spread of the use of life-supporting robots into standard Japanese homes, we therefore created two types of compact and lightweight buoyancy-based mobile balloon robots. The first is a balloon walking robot that can provide humorous and slow movements on two legs for younger sedentary children. The other is a balloon jumping robot that can move around the house for active children and elderly users. Based on the results of the previous questionnaire survey, we composed the two prototype robots using a balloon filled with helium and motion mechanisms. In this paper, we show the design concepts, mechanisms, and properties of these new life-supporting balloon-mobile robots. In addition, a field study conducted in both a nursery school and a care facility has shown that these robots have significant potential for use as communication and therapy robots in terms of their attractive appearance and feather-like motion.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%