T-Top, a SAR Experimental Platform

During these past years, Socially Assistive Robots (SARs) have been used to study the benefits of their uses with elderly people and people with dementia for healthcare purposes. Yet, almost all SARs have somewhat limited perception capabilities or respond using simple pre-programmed behaviors and reactions, providing limited or repetitive interaction modalities. To overcome these limitations and take into consideration the strengths and weaknesses of SARs in healthcare settings, this paper presents T-Top, a tabletop robot designed with advanced audio and vision sensors, deep learning perceptual processing and telecommunication capabilities. Designed as a open hard-ware/software platform, the objective with T-Top is to provide an experimental platform that can implement richer interaction modalities and develop higher cognitive abilities from interacting with people.