HATSUKI : An anime character like robot figure platform with anime-style expressions and imitation learning based action generation
This addresses the gap in otaku-culture robotics by creating an anime-character-like robot for enhanced interaction experiences, though it is incremental in combining existing methods with a new aesthetic focus.
The researchers developed Hatsuki, an anime-style humanoid robot platform with 2D facial expressions and imitation learning for action generation, and evaluated it at an anime figurine event where participants expressed high satisfaction and proposed various use cases, while the imitation learning approach successfully generated 11 context-adaptive actions.
Japanese character figurines are popular and have pivot position in Otaku culture. Although numerous robots have been developed, less have focused on otaku-culture or on embodying the anime character figurine. Therefore, we take the first steps to bridge this gap by developing Hatsuki, which is a humanoid robot platform with anime based design. Hatsuki's novelty lies in aesthetic design, 2D facial expressions, and anime-style behaviors that allows it to deliver rich interaction experiences resembling anime-characters. We explain our design implementation process of Hatsuki, followed by our evaluations. In order to explore user impressions and opinions towards Hatsuki, we conducted a questionnaire in the world's largest anime-figurine event. The results indicate that participants were generally very satisfied with Hatsuki's design, and proposed various use case scenarios and deployment contexts for Hatsuki. The second evaluation focused on imitation learning, as such method can provide better interaction ability in the real world and generate rich, context-adaptive behavior in different situations. We made Hatsuki learn 11 actions, combining voice, facial expressions and motions, through neuron network based policy model with our proposed interface. Results show our approach was successfully able to generate the actions through self-organized contexts, which shows the potential for generalizing our approach in further actions under different contexts. Lastly, we present our future research direction for Hatsuki, and provide our conclusion.