Pepper is a humanoid robot capable of expressing body language, perceiving, and interacting with its surrounding environment, thanks to a wide set of sensors and actuators and exposing capabilities and high-level interfaces for natural interaction with humans. In this article, we present the development of VPepper, the Pepper virtual replica, by describing experiences focused on the interaction of the digital twin with the replicas of the smart objects in a smart home. Pepper robot has been featured with arms and hands, but its motors and actuators cannot support intensive experimental sessions and training procedures to learn how safely touch objects. Here, digital twin metaphor plays a crucial role. By a virtual and reliable replica of the robot, machine learning procedures can be seamlessly moved to/from the digital twin with a significant speedup and preventing the physical robot from deterioration. As a practical application, the reported case study is inspired to ambient-assisted living in elderly assistance. The experience, as well as the entire design and development process, has revealed VPepper and the smart environment to offer interesting opportunities for the physical accuracy of the simulation and for the availability of machine learning instruments that may be converted and adopted for real settings. A final empirical evaluation, performed involving 25 volunteer caregivers, confirms the perceived value and the potential usefulness of the system.

中文翻译：

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DTPAAL：数字孪生 Pepper 和环境辅助生活


Pepper 是一款人形机器人，能够表达肢体语言、感知并与周围环境交互，这要归功于广泛的传感器和执行器以及与人类自然交互的暴露能力和高级界面。在本文中，我们通过描述专注于数字孪生与智能家居中智能对象副本交互的体验，介绍了 VPepper（Pepper 虚拟副本）的开发。 Pepper 机器人具有手臂和手，但其电机和执行器无法支持密集的实验课程和培训程序来学习如何安全地触摸物体。在这里，数字孪生隐喻发挥着至关重要的作用。通过机器人的虚拟且可靠的复制品，机器学习程序可以无缝地移入/移出数字孪生，从而显着加速并防止物理机器人恶化。作为一个实际应用，报告的案例研究对老年人援助中的环境辅助生活有所启发。这些经验以及整个设计和开发过程表明，VPepper 和智能环境可以为模拟的物理准确性以及可转换和采用真实设置的机器学习仪器的可用性提供有趣的机会。最终的实证评估由 25 名志愿者护理人员参与，证实了该系统的感知价值和潜在实用性。