Group 4Session 1Session 1

EmpathyBot

EmpathyBot

Your new best friend: a robot that gives you an encouraging message based on your emotions.

Caroline

First, the robot drives up to you and stops about 20cm away, using the readings from its distance sensor. Next, the robot introduces itself using the speaker function. When the robot is ready to empathize, it snaps a picture of you, using the raspberry pi camera, and determines your emotion, based off of its knowledge from Google Cloud Vision API. Using sets of conditionals, the robot responds differently according to your perceived emotion. The robot has corresponding verbal responses and LED colors to happiness, sadness, anger and surprise. Also, when you are out of the frame, or the camera fails to detect your face, the robot responds accordingly and asks to try again. Finally, when the robot has completed its analysis of your emotions, it returns to its original position by driving backwards.

37 thoughts on “EmpathyBot

  • Abby N. Longstreet

    this is so cool!! good job working with a new API and making it drive around, and I love the video itโ€™s awesome!!

    • Caroline R. DeLuca

      Thank you!! I think I had a little too much fun making the video haha

  • Alex D. Foster

    A very powerful robot that could have many applications even outside of robotics

  • Jennifer Light Cross

    Nice work with the combining the camera and Google API. Also, Oscar winning acting in the video ๐Ÿ™‚

    • Caroline R. DeLuca

      Thank you– acting is clearly a specialty of mine as shown from this video (not really at all haha)

  • Alex E. Stoffelmayr

    great! I didnt even think about using an API in that way. very cool.

    • Caroline R. DeLuca

      Thank you! Google Cloud Vision has some really cool applications!

  • Colin Schaefer

    I think its really cool and fascinating that you were able to work with the camera that way

    • Caroline R. DeLuca

      Thank you! I really enjoy using the camera during this camp!

  • Daniel A. Longyear

    A very creative use of APIs to help make a wellness robot that could help people and make a difference!

    • Caroline R. DeLuca

      That is an awesome idea!! I hadn’t thought of that before! That reminds me of the PARO robot used to treat depression that James Staley talked about– super cool!

    • Caroline R. DeLuca

      Thank you– asking for help was definitely a life saver

    • Caroline R. DeLuca

      Thank you– I’m looking forward to exploring some of them!

    • Caroline R. DeLuca

      Thank you! Google vision has so many applications– check out Caroline Baillie’s project for a different application of the API!

  • Kaitlyn E. CastorPost author

    Really cool how it analyzes your facial expressions!

    • Caroline R. DeLuca

      Thank you! I couldn’t have done it without your help!

    • Caroline R. DeLuca

      Thank you! It definitely took a lot of tweaking, but once the google API worked, the robot became very good at recognizing expressions!

    • Caroline R. DeLuca

      Thank you! I’m glad it worked so well– I was definitely a little nervous about it at first.

    • Caroline R. DeLuca

      Thank you!! I loved your project, too! Caroline and Google API twins!

  • Natalie J. Vu

    This is a cool idea. I like that the robot says something to you after analyzing your face instead of just leaving you sad.

    • Caroline R. DeLuca

      Thank you! The original code actually had the robot respond “do you need a hug?” to sadness, which I though was really cute. But, I wanted to save that response for a further developed version of this robot where it maybe had arms or something to interact/ hug you with (only it would probably be sort of a mini hug because it would have to be really big to hug a human).

    • Caroline R. DeLuca

      Thank you!! I’m excited to explore more creative applications later!

    • Caroline R. DeLuca

      Thank you! The original idea from Dexter really stood out to me!

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