Iolaus: A Robotic Partner

In a social setting, it is often beneficial to have a partner that is aware of the environment and the circumstances and is able to communicate information that otherwise does not come to our awareness. Typically, these are human companions, however a robotic partner may be an alternate solution. For a robotic partner to be successful, it must naturally interact with its user, and be able to retrieve data and analyze the content. We are designing Iolaus, a robotic partner for social settings. Iolaus can be implemented as a robotic parrot perched on the user's shoulder. When the user enters a new social setting the robot parrot can be asked and attempt to answer questions about the people and surroundings, very similar to how a human partner would behave. In this phase of the project, we will be using the Sony Aibo to simulate Iolaus' information retrieval component demonstrating how such a robot can help the user access a vast amount of information in a socially acceptable manner.