Can a Robot Wake a Sleeping Person Up by Giving Him or Her a Nudge?

Abstract

In this study, a robot is modeled to have the behavior of a hearing dog that assists hearing-impaired people. Hearing dogs use physical contact to communicate with hearing-impaired people. The proposed robot nudges an object in contact with a person (in this case, a bed) to deliver urgent notifications. This paper describes the concept of a robot with a nudging capability and discusses an experiment to determine whether such a robot can wake sleeping people wearing earplugs. We discuss the functions of the hearing-dog robot as a wake-up alarm.