iCub is an advanced humanoid robot developed at IIT in Italy which we are using to study "natural" and acceptable human-robot interaction.
Fetch is a mobile manipulator that we are using in scenarios suitable for smart home assistance, e.g. fetch and carry, reminders etc.
The three Furhat robots in our lab are used for human-robot interaction experiments that can benefit from a robot with a variety of different facial expressions, personalities and speech.
"Famous around the world, NAO is a tremendous programming tool and he has especially become a standard in education and research. NAO is also used as an assistant by companies and healthcare centers to welcome, inform and entertain visitors." Nao has 25 degrees of freedom, 7 touch sensors located on the head, hands and feet, sonars and an inertial unit to perceive his environment and locate himself in space, 4 directional microphones and speakers, speech recognition and dialogue in 20 languages, 2 cameras and an open and fully programmable platform. At SIRRL, we use Nao for a variety of social robotics projects including the study of assistive technologies for the care of people with cognitive disabilities.
Meet QTrobot! "QTrobot is the proactive social robot designed to increase the efficiency of education by encouraging an active and engaged interaction and making it simple to attract children’s attention to teach new life skills." This humanoid robot can use hand gestures and facial expressions and is designed as a tool for therapists and educators. At SIRRL, we use QTrobot for social robotics projects to help children with their social skills development.
"MiRo is a fully programmable autonomous robot for researchers, educators, developers and healthcare professionals. With six senses, eight degrees of freedom, an innovative brain-inspired operating system and a simulation software package, MiRo is a flexible platform suited for developing companion robots." At the University of Waterloo the MiRo robots are being used in research on social robots to aid children, older people or people with dementia addressing specific goals related to therapy, education, health or wellbeing. We also use the robots as research platforms for the study of how machine learning algorithms and cognitive architectures can be used to help social robots better interact with and aid people.
Pepper is a humanoid robot that can engage users through its tablet screen, gestures and body movements and using speech recognition. It has 20 Degrees of Freedom and touch sensors in its hands and head. Pepper will be used in a variety of projects involving human-robot interaction. In one of our projects we are using the robot as a facilitator to promote intergenerational relationships. Engaging and entertaining people irrespective of their age gap is a great challenge. Our goal is to make Pepper intelligent enough to understand the context of human interaction in real-time and engage the people through games, music or discussion depending on the situation.
MyJay is designed to make play activities more accessible for children with special needs. The robot acts as a proxy for basketball-like games. Whether at home, school or community centre, MyJay’s goal is to create enjoyable play opportunities. The robot was developed at the University of Waterloo's SIRRL lab, as part of Hamza Mahdi's MASc project, with contributions from coop student Shahed Saleh.
Code and design files are available here.
Research in our lab will also access a variety of other platforms available in the Waterloo Robohub.