GeckoSystems Intl. Corp. (GOSY)

[XenaLives]

BIRON, another stalled robotics project. I would like to look into this some more, but initially I found out that public information on this project was released in 2004.

I wanted to see what was going on with the project currently and I came up with this paper evaluation of Human-Robot Interaction - ML Walters - Nov 1, 2011 - Source: Advanced Robotics, Volume 25, Number 18, 2011.

This study uses taped interaction in a "larger study" of about 200 people because it simply isn't practical to do live user studies.

Previously, Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) user studies have typically employed live human-robot experiments in which humans and real robots interact in various experimentally controlled scenarios (e.g.. Green et al. [6] and Walters et al. [7] ). Live HRI trials are generally complicated and expensive to run and typically test a relatively small sample of possible users. An evaluation approach originally proposed by [8] is a Video-based HRI (VHRI) methodology for user studies, which can provide a supporting method to live HRI user trials. In VHRI studies, interactive robot behaviours are recorded on videotape, which is then shown to many viewers who are then asked to rate the behaviours they watch. The method enables researchers to conduct studies with a large sample of participants in a relatively short time. We chose it as a pilot method to evaluate the domestic robot BIRON (cf. [9-11]). This paper presents the results of a study with 233 participants from Germany, Great Britain and Sweden

The effort to run full scale HRI trials can be large and the number of participants in HRI live user studies is typically relatively small. In live HRI trials, systems might show different behaviours with different users, which may cause concerns regarding comparability of the data.

Description of BIRON systems from the paper - the expense of the systems used means that this unit can not be commercialized on a large scale. The CareBot With Kinects can be commercialized. If low light proves to be a problem (so far GeckoSystems has not reported any such limitation) supplemental IR range finders which were used before Kinect could be added back to the system and it would still be commercially viable.

The robot used for the trials is called BIRON (see Figure 1) and is based on a Pioneer PeopleBot platform. A Sony EVI D-31 pan-tilt colour camera is mounted on top of the robot at a height of 142 cm to acquire images of the upper body part of humans interacting with the robot and to focus referenced objects. An additional camera is used to capture hand movements in order to recognize deictic references. A pair of AKG far-field microphones is located just below the touch screen display at a height of approximately 107 cm enable BIRON to localize speakers. Finally, a SICK laser range finder mounted at the front at a height of 30 cm measures distances within a scene to detect pairs of legs and to navigate. The development of the robot BIRON was framed by a home tour scenario, which envisions household robots able to adjust to new environments like a user’s home. The environments have to be explored together with the customer, who probably is a rather inexperienced user, who has to teach important objects and places to the robot.

Note that the "home tour" mentioned above is a mapping procedure of the home. The CareBot does not need formal mapping to be functional.

The paper also discusses "personalities" for the Robot - something that has been addressed in CareBot development.

So this study is about people watching a video of live robot interaction, but the video they are watching is of an actor and a robot, not a senior.

Therefore, the VHRI trial videos were shot in a real apartment (Figure 3) where the robot system was set up and functional, with an actor playing the part of the participant.

https://uhra.herts.ac.uk/dspace/bitstream/2299/7697/1/906059.pdf

GeckoSystems Claim is legitimate - they did the first in home trials of a care giving Robot, using actual elderly care receivers - not actors.