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Keywords

DIY robot kit; Mixed-reality interaction; User interface

ACM Classification Keywords

Information Interfaces and Presentation: User Interface

Abstract

We present Ani-Bot, a modular robotics system that allows users to construct Do-It-Yourself (DIY) robots and use mixed-reality approach to interact with them. Ani-Bot enables novel user experience by embedding Mixed-Reality Interaction (MRI) in the three phases of interacting with a modular construction kit, namely, Creation, Tweaking, and Usage. In this paper, we first present the system design that allows users to instantly perform MRI once they finish assembling the robot. Further, we discuss the augmentations offered by MRI in the three phases in specific.

Yuanzhi Cao, Zhuangying Xu, Terrell Glenn, Ke Huo, and Karthik Ramani. 2017. Ani-Bot: A Mixed-Reality Modular Robotics System. In Adjunct Publication of the 30th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST ‘17). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 119–121. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3131785.3131833

Teaser figure from the Ani-Bot Paper that shows how the system works.
Ani-Bot system overview: Ani-Bot provides users with (1) a modular tool kit that allows them to (2) assemble and construct robots with crafted DIY objects, and (3) use mixed-reality interaction to perform direct manipulation, sensor driven programming, and animation authoring. (4) Users can easily program their robots to perform environmental interactive tasks, like adding sugar into a teacup or shooting bullets into a bowl.

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