JP2003205179A - Pet type robot - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To operate a pet type robot so that it is closer to a real pet by enhancing the entertaining nature of the pet type robot. <P>SOLUTION: This pet type robot is provided with a storage means for accumulating information on a user in contact, and a control means for putting the robot in motion attached to the user, according to the accumulated data. The contact frequency of the user is determined (step S3), and the accumulated data is forgotten according to the contact frequency (step S8) to lower the attachment degree of attached motion. Consequently, if the user has not been in contact with the pet type robot for a long period of time, the pet type robot forgets the user data accumulated in the pet type robot, and the pet type robot performs the attached motion corresponding to the forgotten degree. The user can thereby have a desire to make contact with the pet type robot frequently and continuously. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2003,JPO

Description

Description: BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a pet-type robot, and more particularly to a pet-type robot that can change emotional behavior according to the “degree of familiarity” for a user. [0002] Pet-type robots have become widespread, and further development of pet-type robots that can take actions close to actual pets is desired. For this reason, for example, when the conventional pet type robot described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-51970 recognizes whether or not the user is a user from the face image of the user captured by the camera, it is simply one of yes and no. Instead of recognizing in the above, the user recognition level increases as the number of times the user touches the pet type robot increases, and the higher the recognition level, the more the emotional behavior associated with the pet type robot is performed. I try to simulate it. [0003] In the conventional pet type robot described above, the more the user loves the pet type robot, the more the pet type robot takes the emotional action corresponding to the pet type robot. It is also easier to empathize with pet-type robots. However, since the conventional pet type robot has only one direction of increase in the degree of recognition of the user, even if the user touches the pet type robot after leaving it for a long time, the pet type robot is There is a problem that the user takes the same emotional behavior, and as a result, the user is less willing to contact the pet-type robot frequently and continuously and gets bored with the pet-type robot. An object of the present invention is to provide a pet-type robot that allows a user to frequently and continuously contact without getting bored. An object of the present invention is to provide a pet-type robot comprising storage means for accumulating information on the user in contact and control means for causing the user to perform a slacking action according to the accumulated data. In the above, the present invention is achieved by providing means for measuring the frequency of contact of the user and means for forgetting the accumulated data according to the frequency of contact and reducing the level of the smoothing action. The present invention is configured as described above, so that when the user has not been indirect to the pet-type robot for a long time, the pet-type robot forgets the data for the user stored in the pet-type robot. Since the pet-type robot performs the corresponding slapping action, the user can have a willingness to contact the pet-type robot frequently and continuously so that he / she can not forget it. DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS An embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is an external view of a pet type robot according to an embodiment of the present invention. This pet-type robot 1 has a dog shape, an imaging camera 2 and an infrared sensor 3 are mounted on the face, a microphone 5 (see FIG. 2) is mounted on the ear 4, and a speaker is mounted on the mouth. 6 (see FIG. 2) is mounted, and touch sensors 7 (see FIG. 2) and the like are mounted on various parts of the body. In addition, ear 4 and limbs 8a, 8
b, ..., neck 9, tail 10, etc. are each articulated, and in addition to various basic behavior patterns such as walking, sitting, ringing, playing, etc., it can take emotional actions such as pampering and kneading according to the degree of emotion It is like that. FIG. 2 is a block diagram of the electric control system of the pet type robot shown in FIG. The control device 20 of the pet-type robot includes a face information detection unit 21 that detects face information from imaging information of the imaging camera 2, a motion information detection unit 22 that detects movement of a subject image from imaging information of the imaging camera 2, and a microphone. 5, an audio information detection unit 23 that detects information collected at 5, a surrounding environment detection unit 24 that detects information about the surrounding environment from input information of the imaging camera 2, the microphone 5, and the infrared sensor 3, and detection by the touch sensor 7. A tactile information detection unit 25 that detects a state of being touched by the body from the signal, and each of these detection units 21 to 21
A recognition processing unit 30 that captures 25 detection results and performs recognition processing. Further, the control device 20 stores information on various emotion models and various basic behavior patterns of the pet-type robot, and stores and updates characteristic data for each user recognized by the recognition processing unit 30. 31 and the action of the pet-type robot is determined based on the basic action pattern read from the storage processing unit 31 based on the recognition result of the recognition processing unit 30 (for example, the basic action pattern of approaching the user in response to the user's call). An action determination unit 32;
Based on the emotion model read from the storage processing unit 31 and the recognition result of the recognition processing unit 30, an emotion generation unit 33 that generates an emotion of the pet-type robot, and features based on the emotion generated by the emotion generation unit 33 A characteristic action generation unit 34 that generates a specific action and corrects the action determined by the action determination unit 32 with the characteristic action. Furthermore, the control device 20 takes in the count values of the built-in battery remaining amount detection unit 11 and the built-in clock 12 and processes the internal information to determine whether or not the current battery charge is necessary and the current time. A user who uses the internal information processing unit 35 to know and the count value of the built-in clock 12 to store the contact frequency for each user as will be described later, and uses this frequency information to determine the coefficient value of the emotion model or basic action pattern to be used. And another frequency storage unit 36. And according to the action pattern determined by the control device 20, the speaker 6 is sounded to drive the ear 4, neck 9, tail 10, limbs 8a ... 8d. The pet-type robot 1 having such a configuration is currently in contact with itself (not only touching the touch sensor 7,
(Including contact by voice and contact where the face approaches within a predetermined distance) to capture the characteristics of the person's face, and to acquire the voice information to extract the characteristics of the voiceprint,
These feature data are labeled with “user number 1” and stored in the storage processing unit 31, and are first stored in the user-specific frequency storage unit 36 as the contact frequency rank “10”. In addition, for another person who is determined to have characteristic data different from the person of user number 1, a different user number is allocated and the characteristic data is stored in the storage processing unit 31, and the contact frequency rank is stored in the frequency for each user. Store in the unit 36. Each time contact from the same person is frequently made, the amount of feature data related to the person stored in the storage processing unit 31 increases, and the recognition rate for the person is improved. Also, the person's angry face and laughing face can be distinguished and recognized, and the angry voice and laughing voice can be distinguished and recognized. Similarly, the frequency storage unit 3 for each user with respect to the person by frequent contact.
The contact frequency rank stored in 6 also increases from “rank 10” to “rank 9” “rank 8”. When the current user recognition rate is high and the contact frequency of the user with the pet-type robot is high, for example, for a basic action pattern of jerking action, a screaming call is made with respect to the user's call. By adding the characteristic action, it becomes possible to simulate an operation that is good for the user (an operation with a high degree of familiarity). Or, even if it is an action to be played, an action that is actively played to a user with a high contact frequency rank for each user is added as a characteristic action to an action that is annoying. It is possible to simulate a gentle operation. In order to add such a characteristic action, in the pet type robot 1 of this embodiment, the emotion generation unit 33
An emotion that causes the pet-type robot 1 to express an action is generated from the recognition result of the recognition processing unit 30 and the emotion model read from the storage processing unit 31, and a characteristic action corresponding to the generated emotion is represented as a characteristic action generation unit 34. Generated by the action determination unit 3
The motion determined in 2 is corrected by a characteristic action to simulate the sluggish motion. The emotion model read out from the memory processing unit 31 to the emotion generation unit 33 is an emotion recognized by the recognition processing unit 30, for example, an emotion of being angry when it is determined that the user has an angry face. The corresponding emotion model is read out. The emotion model is modeled, for example, as a multinomial calculation formula. As the coefficient value of each term of this calculation formula, the larger the user recognition rate, the greater the value. For example, a coefficient value for face recognition, a coefficient value for voice recognition, and a coefficient value for user gesture recognition are prepared as coefficient values. “10” is set as the coefficient value when the user recognition level is the lowest in 10 levels. Such an emotion model with a coefficient value is read out to the emotion generation unit 33, and a characteristic action is added to the action determined by the basic action pattern at that time, so that a user who frequently contacts the user is contacted. On the other hand, it is possible to cause the pet-type robot 1 to take emotional actions with a high degree of emotional expression corresponding to the various actions of the user (legming action). Here, when the user does not contact the pet-type robot 1 for a long time, the pet-type robot 1 according to the present embodiment is less sensitive to the user. The control for lowering the degree of smoothness is performed by lowering the contact frequency rank for each user stored in the frequency storage unit 36 for each user. For example, if a user whose contact frequency rank is “10” does not touch for a long time, the rank is set to 5
The rank is lowered to “5”, thereby lowering the coefficient value of each term described above by 10 in 10 steps. As a result, the expressive power of the characteristic action by the emotion model is reduced, and the degree of familiarity is reduced. Alternatively, when the contact frequency rank is lowered without the user having been in contact for a long time, for example, only the feature data of the user performing face recognition stored in the storage processing unit 31 is discarded, or the emotion model Among them, the coefficient value corresponding to the face recognition degree is temporarily reset to the initial value “1”, and the pet-type robot 1 is temporarily forgotten. By performing such control to reduce the degree of smoothness,
The user can have a willingness to contact the pet-type robot frequently and continuously so as not to be forgotten. FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing the processing procedure of the control device 20 for controlling the above-mentioned smoothness. First, in step S1, various types of sensor (imaging camera 2, infrared sensor 3, microphone 5, touch sensor 7) data are read, and user feature amounts in the read sensor data are calculated (step S2). In the next step S3, the user feature amount obtained in step S2 is compared with the feature data of each user stored in the storage processing unit 31, and the user number corresponding to the corresponding user is identified. And
The degree of recognition of the user's feature data is calculated. In the next step S4, it is determined whether the elapsed time from the previous contact with the user is shorter or longer than a threshold value (for example, 3 days), and if it is shorter, the process proceeds to step S5 and obtained in step S2. The added user feature amount is added to the feature data of the storage processing unit 31. Thereby, the pet-type robot can obtain a learning effect. Then, the characteristic action is determined as described above based on the emotion model (step S6), and the action pattern is determined by adding the characteristic action to the action determined by the basic action pattern to drive each multi-joint drive unit. Then, the pet-type robot 1 is caused to express emotional motion (step S7). If it is determined in step S4 that the elapsed time is longer than the threshold value, the process proceeds to step S8 where the feature data of the user stored in the storage processing unit 31 is deleted or used in the emotion model. One of the coefficient values is reset to an initial value, and the process proceeds to step S6, where a characteristic action is determined based on the deleted characteristic data or the reset coefficient value, and emotional motion is expressed by this characteristic action (step S7). ). As a result, it is possible to reduce the degree of slack when the user has not touched the pet-type robot for a long time, and it is possible to improve the entertainment properties of the pet-type robot. In the above-described embodiment, step S4 is performed.
In step S, the threshold value is compared with the elapsed time.
5) and the forgetting process (step S8) are selected either, but in the case of memory strengthening, a process for changing the weight of newly added user feature data according to the magnitude of the elapsed time is performed to forget In the case of processing, it may be possible to change the degree of user recognition / memory of the pet-type robot in more detail by performing processing of deleting feature data of the user little by little. As the forgetting process, the storage processing means 3
In addition to actually deleting the user feature data stored in 1, the coefficient value of the emotion model is temporarily reduced as described above without actually deleting it, or the user feature data itself is There is also a way to prevent it from being directly reflected in emotional behavioral expressions. According to the present invention, when the user does not touch for a long period of time, the stored data relating to the user is forgotten, so that the actual behavior of the pet can be more simulated. It is possible to improve the entertainment characteristics of the robot.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS FIG. 1 is an external view of a pet-type robot according to an embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 2 is a configuration diagram of a control device for the pet type robot shown in FIG. 1; FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing an example of a processing procedure of the control device shown in FIG. 1; [Explanation of Symbols] 2 Imaging Camera 5 Microphone 7 Touch Sensor 20 Control Device 30 Recognition Processing Unit 31 Storage Processing Unit 32 Action Determination Unit 33 Emotion Generation Unit 34 Characteristic Action Generation Unit 36 User-Specific Frequency Storage Unit

Claims (1)

What is claimed is: 1. A pet-type robot comprising storage means for accumulating information on a user in contact with the user and control means for performing a sniffing operation on the user according to the accumulated data. Means for measuring the frequency of contact;
A pet-type robot provided with means for forgetting the accumulated data in accordance with the contact frequency and reducing the degree of the hitting action.