(Extract from Original Article at techxplore)
"Users provided many positive comments about visual hug initiation, haptic sizing and haptic release," Block said. "In addition to validating our custom robot platform, this paper validates our six design tenets. These findings show that we are moving in the right direction for creating more natural and enjoyable robot hugs, but there is still some room for improvement."
The feedback that Block and her colleagues collected in their user studies helped them to perfect the robot further, ultimately leading to the fabrication of an even newer version of their system, called HuggieBot 3.0. This new robot will be presented in a new paper that is currently being peer-reviewed.
"In addition to showcasing hardware and software improvements, our new paper about HuggieBot 3.0 centers on enabling the robot to detect, classify and respond to intra-hug gestures like rubs, pats and squeezes," Block said. "Being squeezed by a hugging robot is surprisingly enjoyable!"
Original Article HERE for more info:-)
