There are various remote controls in our houses. We have remote controls for TV, air conditioner,
room light, and so on. Remote controls for appliances are commonplace devices and have been widely
spread. However there are significant problems on remote controls. For example, any remote controls
confuse us because we need to use various remote controls with different user interfaces. A universal
remote that aggregates functions of various remote controls is one of technical solutions for this
problem. Users can control various appliances by manipulating a universal remote control, not using
specific remote controls for each appliance. On the other hand, users for traditional button-based remote
control need to search a target button and to move the fmgers to push it. It may be not a serious problem for
young people, but elderly people have a difficulty in such manipulation for remote controls. We consider it
will be comfortable and easily operational even for elder people to use a remote control without looking at
the fingers. Such a remote control is also comfortable to young people who are familiar to home electric
appliances because of easy operation. Also we consider a remote control for appliances should have a lifelike
appearance to become a more familiar artifact to users. By such an appearance, users who are not so
familiar to appliances get to use the remote control without hesitation.
In this paper, we propose a life-like remote control, Rebo, manipulatable only with stroking its surface
and apply to an advanced TV system. Users only stroke its surface with the fmgers to control various
home electric appliances far from them. Rebo has three advantages which conventional remote controls
have never had; familiarity, function awareness, and stroke manipulation. The life-like appearance and
facial expressions make it familiar with users. As for function awareness, we adopt action sloping
that enables users to notice its functions. Therefore, users do not have to seek a button that they want and
use it easily.
As a realized example of the proposed remote control, we develop an advanced TV system in which
action sloping is implemented. We actually implemented some functions like channel select, power on/off
on the advanced TV system, and confirmed the execution.