• Journal of Semiconductor Engineering
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.130-135
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• 2021

Recently, deep neural networks (DNNs) are actively used for action control so that an autonomous system, such as the robot, can perform human-like behaviors and operations. Unlike recognition tasks, the real-time operation is essential in action control, and it is too slow to use remote learning on a server communicating through a network. New learning techniques, such as reinforcement learning (RL), are needed to determine and select the correct robot behavior locally. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient DNN processor with a LUT-based processing engine and near-zero skipper. A CNN-based facial emotion recognition and an RNN-based emotional dialogue generation model is integrated for natural HRI system and tested with the proposed processor. It supports 1b to 16b variable weight bit precision with and 57.6% and 28.5% lower energy consumption than conventional MAC arithmetic units for 1b and 16b weight precision. Also, the near-zero skipper reduces 36% of MAC operation and consumes 28% lower energy consumption for facial emotion recognition tasks. Implemented in 65nm CMOS process, the proposed processor occupies 1784×1784 um2 areas and dissipates 0.28 mW and 34.4 mW at 1fps and 30fps facial emotion recognition tasks.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.388-396
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• 2015

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify the effects on cognitive function, depression, and activities of daily living of Silver- Care-Robot Program for institutionalized elders. Methods: This study was a nonequivalent control group pretest-posttest design. The participants were 42 institutionalized elders (17 in the experimental group and 25 in the control group). The Silver-Care-Robot Program was provided as an intervention which was conducted twice a week for 5 weeks. The Silver-Care-Robot Program is an integrated entertainment program to help the mental, emotional, and physical health of elderly people. Pre-test was conducted on the two groups, and, in order to examine the effects of intervention, a post-test was conducted after 5 weeks. Results: There were significant differences in cognitive function and ADL (activities of daily living) between two groups after the program. But the difference in depression in the institutionalized elders was not statistically significant between the two groups. Conclusion: The Silver-Care-Robot Program should be considered as a regular program for cognitive function and activities of daily living for institutionalized elders.

• Journal of Digital Contents Society
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.859-868
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to investigate the research trend of robot education for young children and elementary students as a basic study for the development of hands-on robot program for young children. Trends by year, research contents, and effectiveness of 155 dissertations and journal papers from 2006 to May 2016 related to robot education for young children and elementary students were analyzed. The results were as follows. In the research subject, research was conducted in the order of integrated education, attitudes and awareness research, and response research for young children and programming education, design development research, and integrated education for elementary students. In the research method, observational research and development research were the most common in young children and elementary students, respectively. In the effectiveness validation, research on social and emotional interaction and research on creativity were the most common in young children and elementary students, respectively. Based on the results of this study, the analysis provided basic data for the development of programs for young children's hands-on robot activities and suggested the direction and implications of robot education in connection with SW education of young children and elementary students.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.10 no.9
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• pp.9-17
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• 2010

Nowadays, many research have been conducted on robots or interactive characters that properly respond to the users affection. In this paper, we develop an intelligent messenger that provides appropriate responses to text inputs according to user's intention and affection. In order to properly respond, the intelligent messenger adapts methods to recognize user's speech act and affection. And it uses an AIML-based interactive script to which tags are additionally attached to express affection and speech act. If the intelligent messenger finds a proper reply in the interactive scripts, it displays the reply in a dialog window, and an animation character expresses emotion assimilated with a user's affection. If the animation character is synchronized with a content robot through a wireless link, the robot in the same space with the user can provide emotional response.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.592-600
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• 2018

As the field of robots is evolving to intelligent robots that can replace even humans' mental or emotional labor, 'robot ethics' needed in relationship between humans and robots is becoming a crucial issue these days. The purpose of this study is to consider the ethics of robots and humans that is essential in this post-human age. It will deal with the followings as the main contents. First, with the cases of developing ethics software intended to make robots practice ethics, the authors begin this research being conscious about the matter of whether robots can really judge what is right or wrong only with the ethics codes entered forcibly. Second, regarding robot ethics, we should consider unethicality that might arise from learning data internalizing human biasness and also reflect ethical differences between countries or between cultures, that is, ethical relativism. Third, robot ethics should not be just about ethics codes intended for robots but reflect the new concept of 'human ethics' that allows humans and robots to coevolve.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.477-481
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• 2014

Human has various types of emotions which affect speculation, judgement, activity, and the like at the moment. Specifically, walking is also affected by emotions, because one's emotion status can be easily inferred by his or her walking style. The present research on biped walking with humanoid robots is mainly focused on stable walking irrespective of ground condition. For effective human-robot interaction, however, walking pattern needs to be changed depending on the emotion status of the robot. This paper provides analysis and comparison of gait experiment data for the men and women in four representative emotion states, i.e., joy, sorrow, ease, and anger, which was acquired by a gait analysis system. The data and analysis results provided in this paper will be referenced to emotional biped walking of a humanoid robot.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.1123-1130
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• 2018

A cat robot for the Autism Spectrum Disorders(ASD) treatment was designed and conducted field test. The designed robot had emotion expressing action through interaction by the touch, and performed a reasonable emotional expression based on Artificial Neural Network(ANN). However these operations were difficult to use in the various healing activities. In this paper, we describe a motion design that can be used in a variety of contexts and flexibly reaction with various kinds of situations. As a necessary element, the speech recognition system using the speech data collection method and ANN was suggested and the classification results were analyzed after experiment. This ANN will be improved through collecting various voice data to raise the accuracy in the future and checked the effectiveness through field test.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.715-723
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• 2012

Objective: The aim of this study is to investigate haptic perception related researches into three perspectives: cutaneous & proprioceptive sensations, active & passive touch, and cognition & emotion, then to identify issues for implementing haptic interactions. Background: Although haptic technologies had improved and become practical, more research on the method of application is still needed to actualize the multimodal interaction technology. Systematical approached to explore haptic perception is required to understand emotional experience and social message, as well as tactile feedback. Method: Content analysis were conducted to analyze trend in haptic related research. Changes in issues and topics were investigated using sensational dimensions and the different contents delivered via tactile perception. Result: The found research opportunities were haptic perception in various body segments and emotion related proprioceptive sensation. Conclusion: Once the mechanism of how users perceives haptic stimuli would help to develop effective haptic interactrion and this study provide insights of what to focus for the future of haptic interaction. Application: This research is expected to provide presence, and emotional response applied by haptic perception to fields such as human-robot, human-device, and telecommunication interaction.

• Proceedings of the Korea Contents Association Conference
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• 2006.11a
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• pp.80-83
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• 2006

Nowadays, the more complicated the society become, the more spreaded individualism is. Moreover, since a number of old people living alone are increasing, human friendly robots for home entertainments are required. Conventional home robots having same behavior for a user's order can't give us funny. In this paper, a robot system based on emotion model for home entertainments is proposed. The proposed system has various behavior for a same order depending on the emotional state such as happy, angry, lovely and joyful grades.

• Language and Information
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.93-121
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• 2013

Identifying the speakers of individual utterances mentioned in textual stories is an important step towards developing applications that involve the use of unique characteristics of speakers in stories, such as robot storytelling and story-to-scene generation. Despite the usefulness, it is a challenging task because not only human entities but also animals and even inanimate objects can become speakers especially in fairytales so that the number of candidates is much more than that in other types of text. In addition, since the action of speaking is not always mentioned explicitly, it is necessary to infer the speaker from the implicitly mentioned speaking behaviors such as appearances or emotional expressions. In this paper, we investigate a method to exploit linguistic clues to identify the speakers of utterances from textual fairytale stories in Korean, especially in order to handle such challenging issues. Compared with the previous work, the present work takes into account additional linguistic features such as vocative roles and pairs of conversation participants, and proposes the use of discourse-level turn-taking behaviors between speakers to further reduce the number of possible candidate speakers. We describe a simple rule-based method to choose a speaker from candidates based on such linguistic features and turn-taking behaviors.