A Remote Puppet Control System for Humanoid Communication Robot

When a speaker communicates a message to the listener, it can be expected to be transmitted more accurately by attaching an appropriate gesture to message. That theory is valid, whether the speaker and the listener are near or far away. However, for a speaker to deliver messages and gestures to a remote listener synchronously, it is necessary to have a real-time conversation system using video images. Therefore, in this research, we propose a mechanism for presenting gestures synchronized with gestures at minimal cost when sending messages to remote listeners. To realize that, we develop a method to move the robot near the speaker instead of conveying the gesture of the speaker on the video shot. In this proposed method, motion data of the hand of the speaker is acquired using a motion sensor, the data is processing, converting into information for moving the motor corresponding to the joint of the robot, and the information is transmitting to the remote robot, the robot moves with motion according to the intention of the speaker. To realize the proposed method, we prepared a mechanism to convert the hand gesture of the speaker into the motion data of the robot in real-time and manipulate the robot in a faraway place. In our system, we realize a function to transmit information of extreme urgency such as disaster information all at once to robots installed in each household. Based on these requirements, we developed a prototype of an information presentation system. By utilizing this system, we expect the speaker’s message to communicate with the multiple listeners effectively.