WO2019041301A1

WO2019041301A1 - Video-based social interaction system employing robotic device

Info

Publication number: WO2019041301A1
Application number: PCT/CN2017/100157
Authority: WO
Inventors: 李庆远
Original assignee: 李庆远
Priority date: 2017-09-01
Filing date: 2017-09-01
Publication date: 2019-03-07

Abstract

Disclosed is a video-based social interaction system employing a robotic device, comprising: a data center; a robotic device; and a remote interactive device. The robotic device serves as an avatar of an absentee to perform video-based social interaction with attendees. The absentee controls, by means of the remote interactive device and the data center, the robotic device to move around a site where the attendees are present. The robotic device is a common device after the video-based social interaction system has been turned off. The robotic device comprises a plurality of audio/video input/output devices, a device, one or more sensors and one or more computers, and has basic intelligence to avoid obstacles. The remote interactive device comprises a plurality of audio/video input/output devices and a computer.

Description

Vehicle robot video social system

Field of invention

The present invention relates to a vehicle robot video social system, and more particularly to a vehicle robot that is an incarnation of a human avatar, and a system for video socializing of a human being present.

Background technique

Traditional video chats capture live audio and video through a camera/microphone attached to the edge of the screen and communicate through the screen and speakers/earphones. However, as the location of the screen display of the absent human avatar (for the presence of humans), and the location of the camera as the absent human eye (for the absent humans themselves), the absence of human beings is beyond control, video chat Realism is not good. Therefore, even in the era of telephone dialing, everyone is imagining a global video conference on a dedicated line that only the rich can afford. In today's fiber-optic homes and smart phones, video chat is still limited to meetings and lovers, relatives, etc. Between intimate relationships. Even if someone can't be present and is willing to start a video chat, the people present are not willing to accept video chat (unless the person who is not present is a celebrity).

The popularity of video chat has to jump out of the scope of meetings/private work/intimacy. However, due to the rapid spread of the Internet, video chat does not have the "magic" aura of the telephone dialing era. Therefore, the present invention introduces a social robot to improve the realism of video chat to both ends of the network.

The prior art social robots, based on neural networks and cloud computing, have the following problems:

· Unless specific needs, basic chat, humans are far better than artificial intelligence (AI);

· The prior art AI has no self-awareness, and its vehicle/mechanical limbs have little practical significance;

· Collecting large amounts of personal data, invading privacy and data leakage risks;

· High cost and high price, and wide-ranging popularity is slow;

Summary of invention

The present invention provides a vehicle robot that is an incarnation of a human avatar, and a system for video socializing with a human being, the advantages of which are:

· As an incarnation of a human being, the social ability is indistinguishable from the human being represented;

· As a human avatar not present, its vehicle/mechanical limb enhances the social interaction capabilities of absent humans, such as socializing with many different people present;

·The robot itself is the carrier, the cost is low, and the battery life is long;

Typical application scenarios of the robot included in the present invention include, but are not limited to:

· Participate in human gatherings, representing the absence of human beings to socialize with the people present;

· As an incarnation of a distant lover, interact with the other party at any time when conditions permit;

· As an incarnation of a child who is far away from home or busy taking care of his or her own family, interact with the empty nest elderly at any time;

In the robot video social system, under the category of this kind of invention, because of the cost problem, the easiest to implement and popularize is the desktop robot that participates in the party. While interacting with off-site lovers/empty nesters, the perspective of small wheeled robots is too low. Large robots are not only costly but also too space-consuming, while flying robots, battery life/cost are serious problems. Now among the young people, the already popular balance car can be used as an ideal vehicle for the robot video social system. It is a human vehicle, and it has more than enough life and low conversion cost.

However, it is to be understood that the invention is not intended to be limited or limited by the scope of the invention, and the invention disclosed herein The skilled artisan includes significant improvements and modifications thereto.

Detailed ways

The invention will now be described more fully hereinafter. However, the invention may be embodied in many different forms and should not be construed as being limited to the embodiments set forth herein. The present invention is intended to be thorough and complete, and the scope of the invention will be fully conveyed by those skilled in the art.

It will be appreciated that various changes can be made in the function and arrangement of the elements without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention. Thus, embodiments are examples or implementations of the invention, not the only implementation. The appearances of "one embodiment", "an embodiment" or "an embodiment" are not necessarily referring to the same embodiment. Although various features of the invention may be described in the context of a single embodiment, the features may be provided separately or in any suitable combination. Conversely, although the invention may be described herein in the context of a separate embodiment, the invention may be practiced in a single embodiment or any combination of the embodiments.

All terms (including technical and scientific terms) used herein have the same meaning as commonly understood by one of ordinary skill in the art to which this invention belongs, unless otherwise defined. It will be further understood that terms such as those defined in commonly used dictionaries should be interpreted as having a meaning consistent with their meaning in the context of the related art and the present disclosure, and will not be construed as idealized or excessive. Formal meaning, unless explicitly defined in this article.

The invention includes a data center, a vehicle robot, and a remote interactive device. The vehicle robot acts as an incarnation of human avatars and socializes with the presence of humans. Absent humans control the robot through remote interactive devices and data centers, and move to the place where humans are present.

The remote interactive device includes several audio and video input and output devices and a computer.

The vehicle robot contains several audio and video input and output devices, vehicles, one or more sensors, and one or more computers with basic intelligence to avoid obstacles. The carrier portion of the carrier robot, also as a human carrier, examples of which include, but are not limited to:

·Universal wheel balancer;

·Two-wheeled balance car;

As a key innovation of the present invention, the current state of the field of consumer robots is discussed in detail below.

First of all, the robot mentioned here includes all machines that simulate human behavior or thought and simulate other creatures, and is not limited to humanoid robots. Robots can be moved by mechanical limbs or by other vehicles, such as two-wheeled balancers, multi-axis drones, submersibles, and even spacecraft to accompany astronauts.

Secondly, the robot can be autonomous (such as Honda's humanoid robot ASIMO, Softbank's emotional simulation robot Pepper) or semi-autonomous robot. The robot included in the present invention belongs to a semi-autonomous robot as an incarnate human avatar, accepting its instructions to move, and having basic intelligence to avoid obstacles.

Obstacle avoidance can be said to be the most basic function of various robots. This is a basic safety movement requirement for autonomous mobile robots, and it is also the key to whether robots can achieve autonomous operations.

The definition of obstacle avoidance refers to the mobile robot in the process of walking, through the sensor to sense that there are static or dynamic obstacles on its planned route, update the path in real time according to a certain algorithm, bypass the obstacle, and finally reach the target point.

Whether it is to navigate planning or avoid obstacles, sensing the surrounding environment information is the first step. In terms of obstacle avoidance, mobile robots need to obtain real-time obstacle information, including size, shape and position, through sensors. There are many kinds of sensors for obstacle avoidance, each with different principles and characteristics, which can be divided into visual and non-visual. The visual system can be used to avoid obstacles to obtain more complete environmental information, but the image processing operation is large, and the technology and cost of equipment and data processing are high. Relatively speaking, ultrasonic sensors, laser sensors, infrared sensors and other non-visual sensors have low cost and relatively simple data processing technology.

Ultrasonic sensors are sensors that convert ultrasonic signals into other energy signals (usually electrical signals). The principle of ranging is to measure the time difference between the ultrasonic wave and the detected ultrasonic wave, and calculate the distance of the obstacle according to the sound speed. It has the advantages of high frequency, short wavelength, small diffraction phenomenon, especially good directivity, and can be directional and propagated. Ultrasonic sensors are low cost, simple to implement, and mature in technology. They are commonly used sensors in mobile robots. However, the ultrasonic sensor has a short working distance, and the common effective detection distance is between several meters, and there is a minimum detection dead zone, generally a few centimeters.

·Infrared sensor refers to the measurement system using infrared as the medium. The general ranging is based on the principle of triangulation. The emitter emits an infrared beam at a certain angle. When the obstacle is encountered, the beam will be reflected back. After the reflected infrared light is detected by the CCD detector, an offset value is obtained and the sensor is used to calculate the sensor to the object. the distance. The infrared sensor is not affected by visible light, and can be measured during day and night. The angle sensitivity is high, the structure is simple, the price is cheap, and the presence of the object can be quickly perceived. However, the infrared sensor is greatly affected by the environment, and the color, direction, and surrounding infrared radiation of the object can cause measurement errors, and the measurement is not accurate enough. For transparent or near-black objects, the infrared sensor cannot detect the distance. The infrared sensor measures less than the ultrasonic sensor.

• A laser sensor is a parameter that uses a laser to measure the distance to an object to be measured, or the displacement of an object to be measured. The principle of the commonly used ranging method is as follows: the pulsed laser emits a pulsed laser with a very short duration, and passes through the distance to be measured and then hits the target to be measured, and the echo returns, and is received by the photodetector. Then, based on the interval between the main wave signal and the echo signal, that is, the round trip time between the laser pulse and the target to be measured, the distance of the target to be measured can be calculated. The laser sensor can realize non-contact long-distance measurement, fast speed, high precision, large range, strong resistance to light and electric interference. However, because the speed of light is much higher than the speed of sound, high-precision time measuring components are required, so it is expensive. And for transparent materials, such as glass, nothing can be done.

• Vision sensor refers to an instrument that acquires image information of an external environment using an optical component and an imaging device, and generally describes the performance of the visual sensor with image resolution. After the image is captured by the vision sensor, it is compared to the reference image stored in memory for analysis. The vision sensor has the advantages of wide detection range, rich information acquisition, and no influence on distance and position. However, in image processing, image processing methods such as edge sharpening and feature extraction have large computational complexity, poor real-time performance, and high requirements on the processor. Moreover, the presence of transparent obstacles such as glass cannot be detected, and the intensity of the field of view is strong and the influence of smoke is large.

Since the measurement of environmental information by a single sensor is not ideal, in practical applications, other types of sensors are often needed for compensation to detect the surrounding environment.

The robot included in the present invention avoids obstacles autonomously by various sensors included therein. This is mainly due to the fact that under the prior art, as an incarnation of the human being, the remote interactive device can operate with limited instructions, and as a consumer electronic product, the operation cannot be too complicated. Even if the future technology can realize complex remote control, as a social robot, it should not consume too much attention of the user to avoid obstacles. After all, obstacle avoidance is a low-level instinct for human activities.

In addition, remotely operating social robots that are not present, do not necessarily have social robots that operate, but also need to eliminate malicious operations and hijacking by hackers.

The video output included in the present invention includes, but is not limited to:

·Projector;

· flat panel display;

· Head-up display (HUD, Head Up Display);

· Head-mounted display (HMD);

The above description is only an embodiment of the invention and is not intended to limit the scope of the invention. Various changes and modifications of the claims and the description of the present invention are still within the scope of the claimed invention. Moreover, each of the embodiments and claims does not necessarily include all of the advantages or features disclosed. In addition, the Abstract and the headings are only used to facilitate the search for patent documents and are not intended to limit the scope of the claimed invention in any way.

Claims

A vehicle robot video social system, comprising a data center, a vehicle robot, and a remote interaction device, wherein the vehicle robot acts as an incarnation human avatar, and performs live video social interaction; the absent human, through The remote interaction device and the data center control the vehicle robot to move to a place where the human being is present; the vehicle robot, after closing the video social system, is an ordinary human vehicle.
The vehicle robot video social system of claim 1 comprising:

Video output, outputting the video of the absent human

Audio output, outputting the audio of the absent human

Vehicle, moving the vehicle robot to different positions and acting as a human vehicle

One or more video inputs, entering the video of the presence of the human being

One or more audio inputs to input the audio of the presence human

One or more sensors for sensing the surroundings of the robot

One or more computers connected to the data center, receiving control commands from the absent human being, controlling input and output transmission of the video and audio, and having basic intelligence to collect data through the sensor to control the Vehicle robot avoids obstacles while moving
The vehicle robot video social system of claim 1 wherein said remote interaction device comprises:

One or more video outputs that output the video of the presence human

One or more audio outputs that output the audio of the presence human

Video input, enter the video of the absent human

Audio input, input the audio of the absent human

a computer, connected to the data center, controlling input and output transmission of the video and audio, receiving and transmitting the control instructions of the absent human
A vehicle robot video social system, comprising a data center, a vehicle robot, and a remote interaction device, wherein the vehicle robot acts as an incarnation human avatar, and performs live video social interaction; the absent human, through The remote interaction device and the data center control the vehicle robot to move to a place where the human being is present; the vehicle robot, after closing the video social system, is an ordinary human vehicle.
The robot video social system of claim 4, the vehicle robot comprising:

Video output, outputting the video of the absent human

Audio output, outputting the audio of the absent human

Vehicle, moving the vehicle robot to different positions and acting as a human vehicle

One or more video inputs, entering the video of the presence of the human being

One or more audio inputs to input the audio of the presence human

One or more sensors for sensing the surroundings of the vehicle robot

One or more computers connected to the data center, receiving control commands from the absent human being, controlling input and output transmission of the video and audio, and having basic intelligence to collect data through the sensor to control the Vehicle robot avoids obstacles while moving
The vehicle robot video social system of claim 4, the remote interaction device comprising:

One or more video outputs that output the video of the presence human

One or more audio outputs that output the audio of the presence human

Video input, enter the video of the absent human

Audio input, input the audio of the absent human

a computer, connected to the data center, controlling input and output transmission of the video and audio, receiving and transmitting the control instructions of the absent human
The carrier robot of claim 5 further comprising: a battery for providing power to said carrier, audio and video equipment, computer, sensor.
The vehicle robot of claim 5, further comprising: a wireless power supply device for providing power to said vehicle, audio and video equipment, computer, and sensor.