Bio-Inspired Flower Robot for Emotional Human-Robot Interaction
Qingyue Liu, Guojie Xu, Canrui Yang, Xunsheng Du, Igarashi Go, Hongqiang Wang
Abstract
Mental health problems are common worldwide, but the available support systems and healthcare services are insufficient and inadequate. Social robots offer a promising solution to achieve social interaction and emotional connection. Nature-inspired architectural robotics can seamlessly blend into human daily life by reshaping future living environments. In this work, inspired by natural flowers, we designed a flower robot with a realistic morphology that simulates the opening-closing, rhythmic movements, and stem-bending movement. Building on the morphological design, we integrated a flex sensor into the petals to enable touch-induced tactile feedback, mimicking the touch-induced plant-like seismonastic movement. Furthermore, we incorporated voice interaction powered by a local large language model (LLM) to achieve adaptive intent understanding and personalized semantic engagement, thereby enhancing interaction flexibility compared to the repetitive tasks and rigid protocols of traditional social robots. Finally, the human-robot interaction (HRI) experiment demonstrated that the flower robot significantly reduced participants' negative emotions and provided positive social engagement. This work developed a bio-inspired flower robot, offering a promising pathway to social interaction and soothing presence.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{ral2026_bioinspiredflowe,
title = {Bio-Inspired Flower Robot for Emotional Human-Robot Interaction},
author = {Qingyue Liu and Guojie Xu and Canrui Yang and Xunsheng Du and Igarashi Go and Hongqiang Wang},
booktitle = {RA-L 2026},
year = {2026}
}