Physical contact using haptic and gestural expressions for ubiquitous partner robot

In this paper, we propose a portable robot to express physical contacts that are parallel to other modalities. It enfolds the user's arm in its arms and tapping the user's arm. The physical contact expressions are generated through a combination of several haptic stimuli and the robot's anthropomorphic behaviors based on its internal state. The aim of our research is building a caregiver-like robot medium. The system was designed for gentle and delicate communication between the user and the robot during a user's outings. The haptic stimuli express warm/cold, patting, and squeezing. Experimental results show that haptic communicative behaviors of the robot increase the intelligibility to the robot's messages and familiar impressions to the robot.