DarumaTO (Daruma Theomorphic Operator) is a social device resembling a Daruma (達磨) doll. With its familiar appearance to older generations of Japan and China, it can potentially serve as a social robot that provides company and monitors health of elderly people - a critical need in ageing societies.



DarumaTO-4W (Daruma Theomorphic Operator v4 Wabbling ), nicknamed "WABO" is a coaching device that was developed within the Horizon 2020 project "e-ViTA".









DarumaTO-3 (Daruma Theomorphic Operator v3 ) was developed and tested within "e-ViTA".







DarumaTO-2 (Daruma Theomorphic Operator v2 ) was the first robot prototype having 2 DoF.







Related publications

Y. Du, K. Zhang, and G. Trovato: "Composite Emotion Recognition and Feedback of Social Assistive Robot for Elderly People", HCI International 2023 - 9th International Conference of Human Aspects of it for the Aged Population (ITAP), Copenhagen, Denmark, July 2023.

Z. Shen, N. Urano, C.-P. Chen, S. Feng, S. Mitchell, M. Katagiri, Y. Du, F. Pariasca Trevejo, T.P. Tomo, A. Schmitz, R. Browne, T. Ogawa, Y. Taki, and G. Trovato: "Participatory Design and Early Deployment of DarumaTO-3 Social Robot", International Conference on Social Robotics, Florence, Italy, December 2022. [link]

G. Trovato, T. Kishi, M. Kawai, T. Zhong, J.Y. Lin, Z. Gu, and A. Takanishi, The creation of DarumaTO: a social companion robot for Buddhist/Shinto elderlies”, in 2019 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM), Hong Kong, China, July 2019. [link]

G. Trovato, L. De Saint Chamas, M. Nishimura, R. Paredes, C. Lucho, A. Huerta-Mercado, and F. Cuellar: "Religion and robots: towards the synthesis of two extremes", International Journal of Social Robotics, p. 1-18, May 2019 [link]

G. Trovato, F. Cuellar, and M. Nishimura: "Introducing ‘theomorphic robots’",
2016 IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, Cancún, Mexico,
November 2016. [link]



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