Real-time Social Touch Gesture Recognition for Sensate Robots

This paper describes the hardware and algorithms for a realtime social touch gesture recognition system. Early experiments involve a Sensate Bear test-rig with full body touch sensing, sensor visualization and gesture recognition capabilities. Algorithms are based on real humans interacting with a plush bear. In developing a preliminary gesture library with thirteen Symbolic Gestures and eight Touch Subtypes, we have taken the first steps toward a Robotic Touch API, showing that the Huggable robot behavior system will be able to stream currently active sensors to detect regional social gestures and local sub-gestures in realtime. The system demonstrates the infrastructure to detect three types of touching: social touch, local touch, and sensor-level touch.