eMuu

eMuu is an embodied emotional Robot designed as an interface between the ambient intelligent home and its inhabitants. This project was carried out as a cooperation between Philips Research, Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and the Advanced Telecommunication Research Institute International (ATR). eMuu is an ongoing project in the Social Robotics track at the Department of Industrial Design at the TU/e.

A salient feature of the ambient intelligent home of the future will be the natural interaction between the home and its inhabitants through speech. An embodied home character, such as eMuu, could be the social entity necessary to provide natural dialogues. This character would have to be able to utilize the full range of communication channels, including emotional expressions, to give intuitive feedback to the user. The research topics in this project included emotional expressiveness of robots, the embodiement of characters and emotional models of characters.

eMuu is based on the robot Muu, that was developed by Michio Okada from ATR. Muu focuses on the social bonding with humans. The character also works as an embodied interface that mediates the social bonding that people establish in everyday conversations. Christoph Bartneck extended Muu with the ability to express emotions and named it emotional Muu, or eMuu. This robot is part of our the Social Robotics research track.

eMuu Related Publications

Bartneck, C., Nomura, T., Kanda, T., Suzuki, T., & Kennsuke, K. (2005). A cross-cultural study on attitudes towards robots. Proceedings of the HCI International 2005, Las Vegas. | Download
Bartneck, C., Reichenbach, J., & Breemen, A. v. (2004). In your face, robot! The influence of a character’s embodiment on how users perceive its emotional expressions. Proceedings of the Design and Emotion 2004 Conference, Ankara. | Download (PDF 0.5MB)
Bartneck, C. (2004). From Fiction to Science – A Cultural Reflection on Social Robots. Proceedings of the Workshop on Shaping Human-Robot Interaction – Understanding the Social Aspects of Intelligent Robotic Products. In Cooperation with the CHI2004 Conference, Vienna | Download (PDF 0.1MB)
Bartneck, C. (2003), Interacting with and embodied emotional Character, Proceedings of the DPPI2003 Conference, Pittsburgh (PDF, 0.1MB)
Bartneck, C. (2002), Integrating the OCC Model of Emotions in Embodied Characters , Workshop on Virtual Conversational Characters: Applications, Methods, and Research Challenges, Melbourne (PDF, 0.1MB)
Bartneck, C. (2002), eMuu – An Embodied Emotional Character for the Ambient Intelligent Home, Ph.D. Thesis, Eindhoven (PDF 1.1MB)
Bartneck, C.; Okada, M. (2001), Robofesta – Robotic User Interfaces in Japan, Symposium on Multimodal Communication with Embodied Agents, CWI, Amsterdam
Bartneck, C.; Okada, M. (2001), eMuu – An Emotional Robotic User Interface, Proceedings of the Philips User Interface Conference (UI2001), Eindhoven (circulation restricted)
Bartneck, C.; Okada, M. (2001), Robotic User Interfaces, Proceedings of the Human and Computer Conference (HC-2001), Aizu, pp. 130-140 (PDF 0.4MB)
Bartneck, C. ; Okada, M. (2001), eMuu – An Emotional Robot, Demonstration at Robo Festa, Osaka. (PDF, 0.4MB)
all publications

eMuu in the press

Tostiijzer lacht, stofzuiger huilt, Natuurwetenschap & Techniek, Nr. 2, February 2008, pp. 34-40
The Art of Building a Robot to Love, New York Times, March 5th, 2006, pp. 16
eMuu was be exhibited at the STRP Festival on March 24-26, 2006
eMuu featured in the national Dutch TV news “Niewslicht” on March 10th, 2006 | Download (MPEG4, 92MB)
De Robots Komen, Peper, March 23rd, 2006, pp. 14-15
Hoe?Zo! Television appearance of eMuu, broadcasted on January 31st, 2006, Nederland 1 | Download (MPEG4, 48MB)
Emotional Robots, Radio Noorderlicht, broadcasted on December 20th, 2005, VPRO | Download (MP3, 8.2MB)
Even a chatbot can turn nasty, New Scientist, October 15th, 2005, pp 26-27
Laat de robots met rust, Eindhoven Dagblad, 25.05.05, pp. 29
Poppetje geeft de chatter een gezicht. Volkskrant, 26.06.04, pp. M3
Pratend poppetje moet chatter gezicht geven, Eindhoven Dagblad, 22.06.04, pp. 5
Robot zonder pokerface (12/2002), Natuur & Techniek , Nr. 12, pp.72
Filosofische Robotgesprekken (11/2002), Groovy , Nr.15, pp. 99
“Machines met gevoel” Eindhovens Dagblad, 07.05.2002, pp. 25 (NL)
“Conferentie UI2001: Design for experience” Nat.Lab. Journal, 12, 22, pp. 1 (NL)
“Een robot voor elk” Leeuwarder Courant, 20.10.01, pp. 11 (NL)
Press information