Keywords: Healthcare Robot | Human Robot Interaction | Robot Pet
Owro is an emotive owl-shaped robot for posture monitoring and wellbeing guidance. It is a product of my amazing collaboration with AI specialist, Ms Katia Bourahmoune. Owro connects with the LifeChair system to track posture data and displays emotive feedback such as happy or sad, based on the user’s posture detected by the LifeChair. It also becomes tired when the user is sitting for too long to prompt standing breaks. Owro becomes excited when the user maintains upright posture over time. When excited it encourages the user to play a posture exercise game to promote interactive balance and core training.
Owro is composed of a white plastic base that is 3D printed based on our designs. The head is fixed on a pan-tilt mechanism driven by two mini servos. Each wing is also actuated by a mini servo. We use two LED matrix displays for the eyes to indicate Owro’s current mood. An analog FSR is used on the head to interact with the robot. Microphones are placed in each ear of the robot for localizing the user’s voice.
An answer to the failing home robot market, Owro has been a lifelong dream of mine. A robot that is essential to human quality of life, a robot not for novelty, but one that we may actually benefit from because it assists with our health and wellbeing on a daily basis. The combination of Owro’s wellbeing centered design and state of the art AI will allow for truly personal and empowering experiences between the robot and each user. Our vision is to have Owro being used in schools, offices and homes around the world as a daily wellbeing monitor as well as a social robot with therapeutic benefits.