A small-size handshake robot system for a generation of handshake approaching motion

Humans often greet one another using a handshake, a common gesture of friendship. In the case of a human and a robot, the robot can smoothly begin to communicate and coexist with humans without feelings of aversion in humans; if it generates a handshake motion that is emotionally acceptable to humans. Thus, we have proposed a handshake request motion model and a handshake respond motion model to generate a handshake approaching motion prior to actually shaking hands with the human. In the handshake request motion model, the robot stretches its hand out to a human to request a handshake. In the handshake respond motion model, the robot responds a handshake when the human requests a handshake. The effectiveness of these models is demonstrated by experiments using a handshake robot system which is fabricated based on the average size of a human arm. Therefore, in this paper, we develop a small-size handshake robot system that uses the handshake request motion model and the handshake respond motion model to generate a handshake approaching motion with a human. The effectiveness of the robot system is demonstrated by sensory evaluation. Furthermore, a handshake motion between robots is realized by using two small-size handshake robot systems which are adopted these models.