The robot itself also received positive comments. “I usually wake up late in the morning,” said one, “but when I began to notice my friends getting ready early, I started thinking about starting the day earlier with my friends.” It’s like sharing daily life activities with friends.” Others reported texting and calling friends more often, and even said that having a Fribo changed their daily routine. One participant said, “I can imagine what my friend is doing and I feel like we live in the same house, but in another room.
Fribo was presented at the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human Robot Interaction last month, an in a paper describing the work (titled “Fribo: A Social Networking Robot for Increasing Social Connectedness through Sharing Daily Home Activities from Living Noise Data”), scientists from Korea’s Yonsei and KAIST universities interviewed four groups of young people who tested the robot over a month. The difference is that it doesn’t rely on individuals volunteering information themselves, and unlike platforms like Facebook, the intended audience is relatively small.īy all accounts, Fribo seems to have been a hit. This is similar to the function of social news feeds. It’s an interesting and novel concept that fosters communication by keeping friends informed about other friends’ activities.
