Visual Robotic Perception System with Incremental Learning for Child–Robot Interaction Scenarios

This paper proposes a novel lightweight visual perception system with Incremental Learning (IL), tailored to child–robot interaction scenarios. Specifically, this encompasses both an action and emotion recognition module, with the former wrapped around an IL system, allowing novel actions to be easily added. This IL system enables the tutor aspiring to use robotic agents in interaction scenarios to further customize the system according to children’s needs. We perform extensive evaluations of the developed modules, achieving state-of-the-art results on both the children’s action BabyRobot dataset and the children’s emotion EmoReact dataset. Finally, we demonstrate the robustness and effectiveness of the IL system for action recognition by conducting a thorough experimental analysis for various conditions and parameters.