• Electronics and Telecommunications Trends
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.12-21
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• 2021

This article presents the future vision and core technologies of the "Life Companion Robot," which is one of the 12 future concepts introduced in the ETRI Technology Roadmap published in November 2020. Assistant robots, care robots, and life support robots were proposed as the development stages of life companion robots. Further, core technologies for each of the ten major roles that must be directly or indirectly performed by life companion robots are introduced. Finally, this article describes in detail three major artificial intelligence technologies for autonomous robots.

• Journal of the Korea Knowledge Information Technology Society
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.327-339
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• 2018

This study is on the elderly people's use and experience of pet robots (companion robots). Applying companion robots for the elderly's daily lives can enhance their quality of life. Leisure is main activity of the elderly who are out of work. Therefore, the quality and diversity of leisure can affect the quality of their life. Companion Robots could provide them with more advanced and interesting experiences. Around the world, population aging becomes one of the most important trends in each country. The social and economic burden of aging is serious challenge on sustainability of the world, including S. Korea. The authors examine use of Companion Robots for elderly (from 50 years old to 90 years old). In this experiment, the authors study and measure many factors including system quality, interface quality, displeasure, enjoyment, willingness to reuse, perception on new technology. In regression analysis, intimacy(t=-2.006, p<.05) is significant factor on displeasure of Companion Robot. In another regression, displeasure of Companion Robot (independent variable) is significant factor on enjoyment(t=-3.327, p<.01) and willingness to reuse(t=-2.636, p<.01). Therefore, when elderly one feels less displeasure of Companion Robot, he/she feels more enjoyment and willingness to reuse. As a result, the elderly who don't familiar to new technology could improve quality of life and leisure activity by using companion robot.

• Design Convergence Study
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.137-152
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• 2017

This research aims to develop the companion robot experience design for elderly in korea based on needs-function deploy matrix of robot and emotion expression research of robot in multimodal interaction. First, Elder users' main needs were categorized into 4 groups based on ethnographic research. Second, the functional elements and physical actuators of robot were mapped to user needs in function- needs deploy matrix. The final UX design prototype was implemented with a robot type that has a verbal non-touch multi modal interface with emotional facial expression based on Ekman's Facial Action Coding System (FACS). The proposed robot prototype was validated through a user test session to analyze the influence of the robot interaction on the cognition and emotion of users by Story Recall Test and face emotion analysis software; Emotion API when the robot changes facial expression corresponds to the emotion of the delivered information by the robot and when the robot initiated interaction cycle voluntarily. The group with emotional robot showed a relatively high recall rate in the delayed recall test and In the facial expression analysis, the facial expression and the interaction initiation of the robot affected on emotion and preference of the elderly participants.

• Communications of the Korean Institute of Information Scientists and Engineers
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• v.24 no.3 s.202
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• pp.5-11
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• 2006

• ETRI Journal
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.666-676
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• 2005

In recent years, motivated by the emergence of ubiquitous computing technologies, a new class of networked robots, ubiquitous robots, has been introduced. The Ubiquitous Robotic Companion (URC) is our conceptual vision of ubiquitous service robots that provide users with the services they need, anytime and anywhere in ubiquitous computing environments. To realize the vision of URC, one of the essential requirements for robotic systems is to support ubiquity of services: that is, a robot service must be always available even though there are changes in the service environments. Specifically robotic systems need to be automatically interoperable with sensors and devices in current service environments, rather than statically preprogrammed for them. In this paper, the design and implementation of a semantic-based ubiquitous robotic space (SemanticURS) is presented. SemanticURS enables automated integration of networked robots into ubiquitous computing environments exploiting Semantic Web Services and AI-based planning technologies.

• The Journal of the Korea institute of electronic communication sciences
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.1089-1094
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• 2022

In this paper, a human coexistence-type companion robot that can communicate with people in daily life and alleviate the gap in care personnel was studied. Based on the voice recognition module, servo motor, and Arduino board, a companion robot equipped with a robot arm control function using voice recognition, a position movement function using RC cars, and a voice recognition function was tested and manufactured. As a result of the experiment, the speech recognition experiment according to distance showed the optimal recognition rate at a distance of 5 to 30 cm, and the speech recognition experiment according to gender showed a higher recognition rate in the first tone, monotonous tone. Through the evaluation results of these motion experiments, it was confirmed that a companion robot could be made.

• Proceedings of the Korea Contents Association Conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.136-139
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• 2006

In this paper, We are proposed the real-time monitor and control mechanism for intelligent robot called URC(Ubiquitous Robotic Companion). URC are intelligent robots designed as to interact with external digital device that can communicate through wire or wireless by integration the network and information technology into traditional robot. In this paper, we implemented the result of this study into the target robot called ISSAC4 and proved its practical worth. We designed it as be able to control on remote by such web browser as anywhere and anytime that show a status information for several controllers, devices, actuators and sensors of robot and guarantee a continuity of real-time image transferring by Client-Pull method and moving control of robot.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.19 no.10
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• pp.469-489
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• 2021

This study explores consumers' responses to socially assistive robotics by using text-mining method focusing on Companion Pets from Hasbro as it gives emotional support. We conducted text frequency analysis, LDA analysis using R programming. The key findings are 1)the most frequently used words the mimicry of living pets and the appearance of companion pets, 2)the five topics were derived from the LDA analysis and classified keywords in each topic split between positive and negative, 3)user, product, environment affect the interaction between consumer and companion pets, 4)consumers who have difficulty in cognition and physical conditions use companion pets to replace living pets. This study provides an understanding of consumer responses in companion pets and gives practical implications that may improve the efficacy of usage for consumers and understand the companion robot, which provides emotional support in COVID-19.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.117-125
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• 2009

Early in 21st century, researches about intelligent service robot that provide various services for a human out of the industrial robot only has simple pattern repetition. It concentrates in the research regarding the URC(Ubiquitous Robotic Companion) robot which connects the network in the intelligent service. This paper proposes the robot system based on network to guide a way. The robot has made by lego brick and used ultrasonic sensor, rotation sensor and RFID tag to recognize external environment. Also, it includes a PDA to process the data between robot and server. The network server transmits information to robot controller by bluetooth and it controls the course movement and evasion of the robot. In this research, the robot system based on network to guide a way is easy to expand service and is able to process a data in real time due to data processing in the server as a part of intelligent robot. And it can reduce the cost to build a robot thank to use cheaper sensor equipment.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2005.10b
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• pp.252-254
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• 2005

In this paper, we present a design for URC (Ubiquitous Robotics Companion) robot S/W platform. The URC robot S/W platform is based on the Qplus/Esto which is developing in ETRI and applied for URC robot reference S/W platform that we use it in case of many different robots with same interface. We expect the platform to save the developing time, to improve the compatibility and to reuse the developed contents.