DEVELOPMENT OF AN AUTONOMOUS QUADRUPED ROBOT FOR ROBOT ENTERTAINMENT

In this paper, we present Robot Entertainment as a new field of the en tertainment industry using autonomous robots. For feasibility studies of Robot Entertainment, we have developed an autonomous quadruped robo t, named MUTANT, as a pet-type robot. It has four legs, each of which has three degree-of-freedom, and a head which also has three degree-of -freedom. Micro camera, stereo microphone, touch sensors, and other se nsor systems are coupled with newly developed behavior generation syst em, which has emotion module as its major components, and generates hi gh complex and interactive behaviors. Agent architecture, real-world r ecognition technologies, software component technology and some dedica ted devices such as Micro Camera Unit, were developed and tested for t his purpose. From the lessons learned from the development of MUTANT, we refined the design concept of MUTANT to derive requirements for a g eneral architecture and a set of interfaces of robot systems for enter tainment applications. Through these feasibility studies, we consider entertainment applications a significant target at this moment from bo th scientific and engineering points of view.(1)