Research by Design: Mirrly a Humanoid Robot for Child-Robot Interaction

Mirrly is a new humanoid robot designed to facilitate human-robot social interactions, focusing on applications in therapy and education for children. Inspired by the need for engaging and effective interactions, Mirrly’s design incorporates a friendly appearance, articulated expressive face, and multimodal interaction capabilities. A key goal of designing Mirrly was keeping costs low while still retaining affective and expressive qualities of the robot. This paper presents the process of development and design of Mirrly. We also delve into the decisions we made to choose and design hardware, software, and interactions. By comparing existing robots and exploring implications for future research, Mirrly demonstrates the potential for advancing Child-Robot Interaction in many application areas. The open-source nature of Mirrly’s platform further encourages collaboration and innovation in the research community, offering a versatile and potentially impactful platform for a diverse range of applications in human-robot social interactions.