MEmote, final project for Making Things Interactive

Concept: Note: this project has now developed into Romibo. Please visit www.Romibo.org to learn more!

MEmote is an affective mobile robot designed to discover potential benefits to children with mental and physical disabilities. (The project is a preliminary exploration executed over the course of two weeks and will continue to be developed and researched).

Design: MEmote aims to harness the tendency of rot memory mimicry (typically of commercials or TV characters) and an aﬃnity for mechanisms to suggest a model of behavior and means of emotional communication through "scripting" to the child. The robot will express it’s level of excitement on a continium from calm to over excited while “playing” such as chasing a ball. As the robot becomes more “excited” it will become more animated through gesture and light, until it becomes “too animated” and removes its self from the excitement to calm down. The robot will make therapist-controlled “scripted” statements in conjunction with its state and behavior, ranging from “Nice and calm,” to “Too much!… Time to relax.” Potentially the robot may be able to impress a mapping of behavior to language with which to model and articulate action and emotion.

Role: Creator/Inventor

Note: this project has now developed into Romibo. Please visit www.Romibo.org to learn more!