The Roberta IRONSIDE project: A dialog capable humanoid personal assistant in a wheelchair for dependent persons

With an aging population and the financial difficulties of having a full time caregiver for every dependent person living at home, assistant robots appear to be a solution for advanced countries. However, most of what can be done with a robot can be done without it. So it is difficult to quantify what real value an assistant robot can add. Such a robot should be a real assistant capable of helping a person, whether indoors or outdoors. Additionally, the robot should be a companion for dialoging, as well as a system capable of detecting health problems. The Roberta Ironside project is a robotic evolution, embodying the expertise learned during the development of pure vocal personal assistants for dependent persons during the vAssist project (Sansen et al. 2014). The project proposes a relatively affordable and simplified design of a human-sized humanoid robot that fits the requirements of this analysis. After an overall description of the robot, the justification of the novel choice of a handicapped robot in an electric wheel-chair, this paper emphasizes the technology that is used for the head and the face and the subsequent verbal and non-verbal communication capabilities of the robot, in turn highlighting the characteristics of Embodied Conversational Agents.