The PaPeRo which stands for "Partner-type- Personal-Robot", is a personal

robot A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the control may be embedded within. Robots may be c ...

developed by

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

ese firm

NEC Corporation is a Japanese multinational information technology and electronics corporation, headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. The company was known as the Nippon Electric Company, Limited, before rebranding in 1983 as NEC. It provides IT and network soluti ...

. It is noted for its cute appearance and

facial recognition system A facial recognition system is a technology capable of matching a human face from a digital image or a video frame against a database of faces. Such a system is typically employed to authenticate users through ID verification services, and wo ...

. The robot's development began in 1997 with the first prototype, the R100. The name PaPeRo was adopted in 2001. PaPeRo has been researched and developed with the intent for it to partner with human beings and live together with them. For this reason, it has various basic functions for the purpose of interacting with people. Since the original introduction of PaPeRo, there have been a few different versions, including a Childcare Version, 2003 and 2005 revised versions, and "PaPe-Jiro", a robotic comedian. In 2006, a virtual PaPeRo was released for use in any PC running the

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

operating system and the

Pocket PC A Pocket PC (P/PC, PPC) is a class of personal digital assistant (PDA) that runs the Windows Mobile or Windows Embedded Compact operating system that has some of the abilities of modern desktop PCs. The name was introduced by Microsoft in 2000 ...

. The robot is programmable using a development environment known as "PaPeRo Creator". For PaPeRo to interact with people and perform autonomous actions, it must understand information on the conditions of, and outside, the location where it has been put. For this reason, various devices have been included to detect the outside area, such as a CCD camera, microphone,

ultrasonic sensors Ultrasonic transducers and ultrasonic sensors are devices that generate or sense ultrasound energy. They can be divided into three broad categories: transmitters, receivers and transceivers. Transmitters convert electrical signals into ultrasoun ...

, etc. In spring 2009, NEC introduced PaPeRo Mini, weighing half of the current PaPeRo model, with physical dimensions roughly half the size of the original. The PaPeRo Petit was introduced in 2013, which is even smaller at 23 cm tall. NEC plans to use this version to provide a service "that will allow family members living apart to watch over each other utilizing the robot and cloud computing technology."

Specifications

* Height: 385 mm * Width: 282 mm * Depth: 251 mm * Weight: Approximately 6.5 kg * Continuous operating time: 2 to 3 hours * Battery charging time: 2 to 3 hours ''Source:''

Technology

PaPeRo uses different technologies to interact with its environment. For example, Its "eyes" are really twin cameras with a face recognition system. When PaPeRo has nothing to do, it roams around looking for faces. Upon finding one, it will try to start a conversation. PaPeRo also has a

speech recognition Speech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers with the m ...

system. With a pair of sensitive microphones, it can determine exactly where a sound comes from and if the sound is human speech. The robot will then interpret the information and respond accordingly. While PaPeRo roams around, it uses an ultrasound system located in its chest to detect objects. If an object lies in its path, PaPeRo's

ultrasound Ultrasound is sound waves with frequency, frequencies higher than the upper audible limit of human hearing range, hearing. Ultrasound is not different from "normal" (audible) sound in its physical properties, except that humans cannot hea ...

system will detect where exactly the object is, and then PaPeRo will decide what to do to avoid the object. PaPeRo also has other sensors located in its head, which can detect if the robot is patted, slapped, etc., with PaPeRo responding accordingly.

External links

References

{{Reflist Entertainment robots Social robots Robots of Japan 2001 robots Rolling robots