Teaching handwriting using robot and onomatopoeia

Since personal computers and mobile phones are now widespread, situations requiring handwritten characters are decreasing. There are many situations, i.e., places for social activities and ceremonial occasions, that require writing characters by hand, so people need the place to learn handwriting skills. Handwriting skills improve quickly with a teacher, but people cannot always learn with a teacher. Moreover, handwriting skills, i.e., pen pressure and speed, are not easily obtained even with a teacher. We therefore have been developing a method involving a robot that instructs handwriting skills. In this paper, as the first step of our research, we introduce a handwriting robot in which pen pressure and speed are controlled through onomatopoeia.