• 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.

• 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.

• Journal of Digital Contents Society
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• v.18 no.7
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• pp.1293-1301
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• 2017

Recent changes in social structure, such as nuclear family and personalization, are leading to personal and social problems, which may cause various problems due to negative emotional amplification. The absence of a family member who gives a sense of psychological stability in the past can be considered as a representative cause of the emotional difficulties of modern people. This personal and social problem is solved through the empathic interaction of the companion robot communication with users in daily life. In this study, we developed sophisticated empathic interaction design through prototyping of emotional robots. As a result, it was confirmed that the face interaction greatly affects the emotional interaction of the emotional robot and the interaction of the robot improves the emotional sense of the robot. This study has the theoretical and practical significance in that the emotional robot is made more sophisticated interaction and the guideline of the sympathetic interaction design is presented based on the experimental results.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.1-6
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• 2010

For the personal robot to serve humans as a companion in our daily life, it is obviously important that the robot should have a long-term relationship to users. In this paper, we introduce a simple idea on how to make the long-term relationship by using just low-cost and simple robots. We also describe the robotic artificial creature system to implement this idea. The artificial creature robots respond not only physical environment changes but also the logical information changes in the virtual world such as the Web. They consist of a control robot and several simple robots, which show users various group behaviors. Users have a relationship with them by observing these behaviors, rather than interacting with them. We separate physical robots and software applications in order that artificial creature robots can have more various behaviors made by various software applications. Finally, we implemented the system using a robot simulator to show some example cases.

• Asia-pacific Journal of Multimedia Services Convergent with Art, Humanities, and Sociology
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• v.8 no.8
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• pp.883-892
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• 2018

Recently, as interest in social robots to support physical convenience and emotional sympathy has increased, and social internet has developed, a social robot has evolved as various services simply beyond robot function. Therefore, to develop a social robot service effectively, it is required to study the functional application and methods of interaction between user and social robot service. The purpose of this study is to classify social robot services and to suggest the types of elements that need to be considered in service development. To do this, we conducted in-depth case studies and analysis based on the theoretical definitions and characteristics of social robots. Then, based on the sympathy and functions, we classified social robot services into 1) emotional support type, 2) companion type, 3) guide type, and 4) life support type. In addition, in this study, we derive the considerable factors according to the classified types for the development of effective social robot services. This study will contribute to the understanding and development of various services using a social robot.