New Open-Source Robotic Chess System for Human-Robot Interaction Research
Artificial intelligence (AI) systems have made significant advancements in playing games with humans, particularly in online digital environments. However, a new open-source robotic system developed by researchers at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) takes this interaction to a physical, real-world level by playing chess against human users.
The system consists of a Franka Emika Panda robot arm, a ZED2 stereo camera, and an NVIDIA Jetson Nano computing board. This combination of hardware and software components allows the robot to perceive the chess board through the camera, analyze and evaluate the game state, plan and execute moves, and interact with human players through voice and gestures.
One of the key aspects of this robotic platform is its ability to analyze images of the chess board, translate them into text descriptions, and feed this information to a chess engine to derive predicted moves and scores. The robot can then plan and execute its own moves on the board while communicating with the human player using voice and gestures.
Initial tests of the robot’s chess-playing abilities have shown promising results, with the robot effectively planning its moves and executing them on the board. The researchers have made the underlying code and datasets open-source, allowing others to reproduce and further study human-robot interactions with the robot.
Future research using this robotic platform will explore how AI-embodied robots influence human interactions through emotional expressions and more natural verbal interactions. Additionally, the robot’s capabilities may extend beyond chess to general physical assistance, opening up new avenues for exploration and study.
Overall, this open-source robotic system represents a valuable resource for human-robot interaction research and demonstrates the potential for AI-enabled robots to engage with humans in meaningful ways in the real world.
Reference: Zhang et al. (2024). An Open-Source Reproducible Chess Robot for Human-Robot Interaction Research. arXiv.