A robotic platform for edutainment activities in a pediatric hospital

Social Robotics is a rapidly expanding field of research, but long-term results in real-world environments have been limited. The MOnarCH project has the goal of studying the long-term social dynamics of networked robot systems in human environments. In this paper, we present the MOnarCH robotic platform to the research community. We discuss the constraints involved in the design and operation of our social robots, and describe in detail the platform that has been built to accomodate the project goals while satisfying those restrictions. We also present some preliminary results of the navigation methodologies that are used to control the MOnarCH robotic platforms.