A new homegrown robotics innovation is aiming to make human machine interaction more natural, emotional, and accessible across age groups.
Innovators at the National Institute of Technology Rourkela have secured a patent for a robotic system designed to function as a friendly social companion. The robot uses artificial intelligence and Large Language Models to hold live conversations that go beyond pre coded responses.
The system is capable of understanding and responding to human emotions such as happiness, neutral behaviour, and upsetting situations. By reading facial expressions, it can react in an emphatic or comforting manner during interactions. The core focus of the innovation is to create smooth and intuitive communication by combining verbal and non verbal cues.
The robot understands everyday language, follows spoken instructions, answers questions, and engages in real time conversations. It can also detect basic gestures like waving or raising a hand and respond accordingly. This feature makes it easy to use for people of all ages, including children and elderly users who often rely more on gestures than spoken commands.
For verbal communication, the robot can greet users, give instructions, and reply using natural sounding speech. It uses a Raspberry Pi system to process voice or text inputs. The Large Language Model analyses the input, understands the context, and generates a human like response. The reply is delivered through the robot speech system using Google Text to Speech.
The work is co authored by Associate Professor Anup Nandy from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Associate Professor Asim Kumar Naskar from Electrical Engineering, research scholar Sougatamoy Biswas, and MTech graduate Rahul Saw. The findings have been published in the Computers and Electrical Engineering journal by a global publisher.
Nandy said, “The indigenously developed robotic system significantly aligns with the Government of India’s Make in India and Atmanirbhar Bharat initiatives. In contrast to existing systems available globally, the NIT Rourkela social robot introduces a uniquely integrated framework that combines gesture, emotion, speech and LLM based conversational abilities within a cost effective platform suitable for Indian contexts.”
The robot features a wheel based movement system with built in distance sensors to avoid obstacles and move safely in crowded areas. It can be used in homes to assist elderly individuals, in education to explain complex topics through conversation, and in hospitals, workplaces, and community spaces to create a welcoming environment.
The expected cost of the robot ranges between Rs 80000 and Rs 90000, depending on manufacturing scale and component optimisation. The research team plans to enhance interaction features and conduct real world pilot testing in schools, hospitals, and community settings.
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