Author: Claude Toussaint

In this demo we show the current state of NAVEL’s nonverbal and verbal dialog capabilities. There were a total of two recording sequences from which the demo is cut together. As a technical basis for the dialog system, we use RASA, which uses various AI modules for both the NLU […]

On 17th of December 2021 we had our last team meeting. The almost three and a half years went by much too quickly. The BMBF research project VIVA officially ended at the end of December. Due to the Corona pandemic, the project could not be implemented 1:1 as originally planned. […]

The Körber Foundation asked us to present our robot NAVEL on their thematic series “Logged in”. Together with Arne Manzeschke, professor of anthropology and ethics, and the moderator Katharina Heckendorf, we discussed the social potentials and risks that social robots have. We need to be especially mindful of vulnerable user […]

we have developed another locomotion platform for our social robot, which allows the tall robot figure to ride dynamically despite a small footprint, while always remaining stable. Stay tuned.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nrp7geg6Wg Gradually, we are getting closer and our head is becoming interactive.For social interactions and thus for social robots, verbal and nonverbal communication is essential. Therefore, we have put a lot of emphasis on the design of our head. Agile head movements with silent gearless drives and lively facial expressions […]

Our second Ballbot version is already quite a bit more dynamic than the first. It’s really fun to drive around with it and test the limits. The new mechanics and new more complex controllers create a much more stable behavior, both when driving over uneven surfaces and when turning around […]

In the last few months, we have done initial field tests with our Wizard-of-Oz prototype. We used it in nursing homes and a pediatric clinic with autistic children. A Wizard-of-Oz prototype is not autonomous but is controlled remotely. For this purpose, we can remotely control the robot with a browser […]

https://youtu.be/_Tv8UZMigrA Eye contact is one of the most important means of communication. We want to be seen. And we want to see when others look at us. Therefore, it is essential for a social robot to have the ability to make eye contact. Unfortunately, two eyes shown on a flat […]

We are testing different drive systems for our social robot. A ballbot is a nice way to give an upright robot a comparatively small footprint. Think, for example, of Pepper’s cantilevered tripod. It needs a lot of room to maneuver in living areas. There’s another advantage: tall robots with conventional […]

Originally, robots were developed to relieve us of physically demanding tasks. Psychological support was never intended. Just as it is repeatedly emphasized that artificial intelligence will not be used in psychological or socio-emotional fields as quickly. But the positive results of various studies show that we should rethink these basic […]

Sometimes we are confronted with statements that in the nursing sector money is in principle scarce and therefore no money can be earned. This is of course only partly true. Nursing care is very expensive for people in need of care and their families. The nursing care industry itself can […]

Many studies show how social robots can influence your emotions. A beautiful study from Yale University has now shown that social robots can even positively influence human behavior towards each other. A team of four is supposed to play a game on a tablet and cooperate together. A robot is […]

This short clip shows our prototype for the visual perception pipeline we are currently developing for our social robot. The visual perception pipeline features deep neural networks optimized for inference on the NVIDIA Jetson Xavier AGX, which comprises the mtcnn face detector for face detection comprised out of 3 convolutional […]

We have conducted interviews with larger and smaller care home operators to evaluate the extent to which our social robot could assist in the current challenges in nursing homes. As with any user research, we have gained some very valuable insights. We all know that the workload for the nursing […]

For our first design prototype, we worked with a wide variety of material manufacturers and service providers. We want to test the possibilities of new materials and manufacturing processes in order to give our social robot not only a beautiful appearance, but also an appealing haptic. In addition, topics such […]