Design and development of the social humanoid robot named Ribo

Abstract

This paper is about the design and development of ”Ribo”, the upper torso enabled social humanoid robot and the mass people's response to it as received at several public exhibition. Ribo is 135cm tall and has necessary actuation in the face to show basic facial expression. The exterior design is especially crafted to make it look more like a social artificial being rather than just a mechanical robot. The robot is optimized by a distributed software architecture which enables modules developed in different programming languages to work in sync. Ribo was presented in several exhibitions in Bangladesh where mass people directly interacted with it. During that time the visitors were asked several questions on the robot's design to rate the social behavior of Ribo. According to the survey, people liked Ribo mostly because of its facial design and how it speaks in their mother tongue.