Rhythm in human-robot social interaction

Technologies have been developed for the perception, generation, and synchrony of rhythmic behavior that enable robots to dance with children. Keepon is a small robot that is designed to promote comfort and understanding in children, particularly those who are suffering with developmental orders such as autism. The eyes of Keepon are cameras and nose is a microphone and four motors in its base provides four degrees of freedom in its motion and each of the degrees of freedom has various parameters that determine its movement. The dancing robot stimulated a wide variety of play modes and the robot's dancing can be synchronized either to the movements of an accelerometer-instrumented toy or to prepare children's song. The design of robots interacting with human through natural social behavior focuses on verbal communication or emotional facial expression.