Realization of expressive body motion using leg-wheel hybrid mobile robot: KaMERo1

A 7 degrees of freedom leg-wheel hybrid mobile robot, it is called KaMERo(Kaist motion expressive robot), which can conduct not only various types of locomotion but also noble body motions, is developed. The KaMERo has total three leg-wheel hybrid leg mechanisms. Basically each hybrid leg mechanism consists of 2-DOF leg which has 90 degrees bendable knee joint and one wheel at the end of the leg. Two front legs are having passive wheel, which means no actuator, and one rear leg is having active wheel. And all the wheels are center oriented wheels and individually steerable. This particular and unique configuration of KaMERo has interesting characteristics of: (1) three types of locomotion (2) various body expressions. Through this paper, three emotional expressions and behavioral expressions are proposed and realized through a real robot system. Also, to evaluate and verify the effectiveness of proposed emotional body expressions of KaMERo, human survey is conducted and its result is analyzed. This paper introduces a new leg-wheel hybrid mobile robot, KaMERo, and proposes expressive body motions and verified its emotional expressions.