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Humanoid

iPal

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The Interaction Lab currently has 2 iPals, which are 3.5 foot tall humanoid robots by AvatarMind. It has 15 degrees of freedom, with 5 for each arm, two for its head, and 3 for the wheelbase attached to its feet. It had hidden LEDs behind its face to enable facial expressions, and a 6" touch screen on its chest. It also has a number of sensors, including 3 infrared, 5 ultrasound, and 5 touch sensors. The Interaction Lab currently owns 2 iPals.


QTrobot

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The Interaction Lab currently has 1 QTrobot, a robot platform made by LuxAI. QT has a screen for displaying facial expressions and comes with preprogrammed games and behaviors, but can be programmed to enable additional or more advanced interactions.


Bandit II

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The Interaction Lab currently has 6 Bandit robots. Bandit is a robot platform designed by the Interaction Lab over a decade ago and built by Blue Sky Robotics. Bandit is designed to facilitate research into human-robot interaction: it is a size that is appropriate for both child-robot and adult-robot interactions, it has an expressive face and 6 DOF arms, as well as a 2 DOF neck. The torso can be mounted on various mobile bases, from short ones (e.g., Pioneer, Turtlebot) to tall ones (e.g., iRobot Eva). Our lab has used Bandit in numerous studies, including those involving children with autism, elderly with Alzheimer's Disease, healthy elderly, K-12 children being told to avoid bullying, and others.


Nao

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The Interaction Lab currently has 11 Nao robots. The Nao robot is a full-body humanoid robot by Aldebaran Robotics. It is approximately 26" tall with 26 degrees of freedom in the neck, shoulders, elbows, hands, hips, knees, wrists, and ankles. It has a number of sensors, including an IMU, sonar, video, microphones, and force sensors. It has two speakers and colored LEDs in the eyes for expressive output.


PR2

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The PR2 is a mobile manipulation platform, designed and manufactured by Willow Garage. Our lab is one of 12 that was awarded one of the original PR2 platforms from Willow Garage; we then purchased it at the reduced cost. The PR2 is equipped with two 8 DOF arms, a semi-holonomic base, and a variety of high-end on-board sensors including narrow and wide-angle stereo rig with a texture projector and a tilting laser rangefinder. The PR2 is tightly integrated with Willow Garage’s Robot Operating System (ROS), which provides numerous packages for navigation, motion planning, low-level control, visualization and simulation. Our team has been working with the PR2 since its inception, both at Willow Garage and at USC. We have contributed a great deal of code to the ROS repository, for the PR2 and other robot platforms.


Sparky

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Sparky is a Minimatronic Figure (TM) courtesy of Walt Disney Imagineering Research and Development. The 18 DOF robot is tendon-driven with small servos, and can be used to reproduce human-like motions. Sparky can be mounted on a mobile base.

Squash-and-Stretch

Spritebot

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The Interaction Lab currently has 13 SPRITE robots. The Stewart Platform Robot for Interactive Tabletop Engagement (SPRITE) robot is built around a six degree-of-freedom Stewart platform base, with a bracket that holds a mobile phone, on which the robot's face is displayed. The robot is approximately 30 cm tall (without fur), with a 10 cm range of motion, depending on the angle of the platform. The robot's appearance can be changed by modifying the covering. The "Kiwi" skin is green and has a bird-like appearance, while the "Chili" skin is red and plush, with a dragon-like appearance.

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MyKeepon

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MyKeepon is a consumer-grade version of the Keepon robotic platform. It has a microphone, located in the nose, and can sense when it is being touched on its head or its sides. MyKeepon comes pre-programmed for dancing and reacting to touch, but the platform is easily hacked into for more advanced robotics programming.

Mobile Remote Presence

Suitable Beam +

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The Interaction Lab currently has 4 Beam+ mobile telepresence systems that are about child-height and integrated with a videoconferencing system (including a camera, display, speaker and microphone). It utilizes the same interface as the first generation Beam Pro and provides some of the same features including autonomous docking. The Beam+ is a low-cost platform making it appropriate for a number of applications including education.


Ohmni

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The Ohmni Labs telepresence robot is another low-cost mobile remote presence solution. This platform possesses two-way audio and video features, and also features a moving neck and a folding feature that makes it easy to transport. With the support of Ohmni Labs, the Interaction Lab is working to modify the hardware and software of our Ohmni robot to improve the telepresence experience of robot users.


Giraff

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The Giraff is a remotely controlled mobile, human-height physical avatar integrated with a videoconferencing system (including a camera, display, speaker and microphone). It is powered by motors that can propel and turn the device in any direction, even backwards. The Giraff can turn in place to face a person or object, and the display can also be tilted up and down to extend the vertical field-of-view.


Vgo

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The Vgo mobile remote presence system is a child-height mobile telepresence physical avatar integrated with a videoconferencing system (including a camera, display, speaker, and microphone). It is marketed for tele-operation, but our lab is enabling it with autonomous operation capabilities, so we can use it in various operational modes, from fully autonomous to partially tele-operated to fully tele-operated. The display can be used to show its human operator, which, for our work, is often a child.

Tabletop

QTrobot

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The Interaction Lab currently has 1 QTrobot, a robot platform made by LuxAI. QT has a screen for displaying facial expressions and comes with preprogrammed games and behaviors, but can be programmed to enable additional or more advanced interactions.


Mabu

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The lab uses one Mabu robots, made by Catalia Health. Mabu's head and eyes are actuated, and it has a camera, microphone, speakers, and touch screen display.


Maki

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Maki is an entirely 3D-printed platform developed by Hello-Robo. It measures 342mm (13.5") tall and has 6 degrees of freedom in its head.


Romo

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Romo is consumer robot by Romotive. It has an animated face that works on either an iPhone or iPod Touch and a mobile base.

Mobile Robots

Kuri

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The lab uses two Kuri robots, made by Mayfield Robotics (out of business). Kuri has a wheeled mobile base, audio speaker, capacitive head sensor, a camera, and a couple microphones. Kuri expresses emotions by moving its head and eyelids and making various beep sounds (similar to R2D2).


Pioneers

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The lab uses 16 Pioneer mobile bases for robot locomotion. This includes 10 Pioneer 2DX robots, 2 Pioneer 1s, and 4 Pioneer 1AT robots. The Pioneer 2DX is differentially steered, with 16 sonar sensors. It contains an onboard Pentium computer, and has 802.11 wireless Ethernet, a camera, a sound card, and various bumpers and grippers. The Pioneer 1 is differentially steered with 7 front and side facing sonars. The AT version has wheels suitable for outdoor use, and has an onboard PC104 computer. The versatile design of the Pioneers allows us to mount a variety of additional sensors and components, such as our humanoid robots, laser scanners, and cameras.


Turtlebot

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The Turtlebot robot is a small non-holonomic mobile robot, fully integrated with ROS, and including a netbook and kinect for onboard computation and navigation.


iRobot Ava

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The Ava is a fully-holonomic mobile robotics platform designed and manufactured by iRobot. It features integrated autonomous navigation capabilities supported by an impressive set of sensors.


iRobot Create

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The iRobot Create is a small non-holonomic differential-drive robot aimed at educational robotics. It is based on the iRobot Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner and has similar capabilities in terms of mobility and sensing, but without any of the vacuuming components. We maintain a set of ten of these robots and utilize them extensively for our educational robotics outreach programs.

AR/VR

Microsoft Hololens

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The Microsoft HoloLens is a pair of mixed reality smartglasses developed and manufactured by Microsoft. The Interaction Lab currently owns two Microsoft HoloLenses.


Google Glass

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Google Glass is a brand of smart glasses – an optical head-mounted display designed in the shape of a pair of eyeglasses. The Interaction Lab currently owns two sets of Google Glasses.