PROJECTS

[Reference /引用はこちら]
Yuta Sugiura, Calista Lee, Masayasu Ogata, Anusha Withana, Yasutoshi Makino, Daisuke Sakamoto, Masahiko Inami, and Takeo Igarashi, PINOKY: a ring that animates your plush toys, In Proceedings of the 2012 ACM annual conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’12), ACM, 725-734, May 5-10, 2012, Austin, TX, USA. [DOI]

本研究では、PINOKY（ピノキー）と呼ばれる、一般的なぬいぐるみの手足、尻尾などの部位を動かすことができるデバイスを開発した。デバイスはリング型で、アクセサリ感覚でぬいぐるみに取り付けることができる。本デバイスは、モータによってぬいぐるみの表面の布を外側から引っ張ることで、屈曲を実現する。従来手法は、ぬいぐるみの内部に機構を埋め込み駆動させることが一般的であった。本提案では、ぬいぐるみを切り裂くなどの加工を加えることなく、ロボット化することが可能である。本デバイスを一般のユーザに利用してもらい、容易に扱えることを確認した。また、実験結果を元にアプリケーションを作成した。

PINOKY is a wireless ring-like device that can be externally attached to any plush toy as an accessory that animates the toy, such as by moving its limbs. A user is thus able to instantly convert any plush toy into a soft robot. The user can control the toy remotely or input the movement desired by moving the plush toy and having the data recorded and played back. Unlike other methods for animating plush toys, PINOKY is non-intrusive, so alterations to the toy are not required. In a user study, 1) the roles of plush toys in the participants’ daily lives were examined, 2) how the participants played with plush toys without PINOKY was observed, 3) how they played with plush toys with the device was observed and their reactions to the device were surveyed. On the basis of the results, potential applications were conceptualized to illustrate the utility of PINOKY.