Social robots

In simple words, social robots are personal companions or assistive robots that can interact with human beings using speech, vision, and gestures. These robots behave like pets that can express emotions like us and can communicate their emotions using speech or gestures.

Nowadays, most social robots have an LCD display on their heads, actuators for movement, speakers and microphone for communication, and cameras for perception.

Here are some images of popular social robots:

Figure 1: Famous social robots

Let's learn about them:

These may have high intelligence and social skills. But most of the robots' source code is not open source, so we can't explore much about the software platforms and algorithms they use to implement them. But in this chapter, we are going to look at some of the open source solutions to build intelligence and social skills in robots.