Interaction With Mobile Robots in Public Places

Robotics is undergoing a change. While in the past, robots were predominately employed for assembly and transportation purposes in settings like factory floors, a new generation of service robot has begun to emerge, designed to assist people in everyday life [8, 16, 21, 23]. This raises the question as to what physical shape these robots should take, and how they should behave. In mobile robotics, on which this article focuses, these issues remains relatively poorly explored (despite various efforts, such as [1, 6, 11, 15, 30, 31]), specifically in comparison to mobile robot navigation, which has been investigated thoroughly (see e.g., [3, 5, 14]). The goal of developing robots that operate in the same spaces where people live and work raises new questions. What physical appearance should these robots have? What things should they by capable of manipulating, and how? What purposes other than manipulation and navigation should such robots have? How should those robots behave? In which way should they interact with people? This paper focuses on robots operating in public places, where many people interact with a robot for a short time only. Such application domains include receptionists (e.g., in companies, hotels, trade shows), information kiosks, tour-guides, merchandising robots in the retail sector, and so on. The interaction with such robots typically takes place in the short term, that is, people spend only limited time with a robot. This critically limits their ability to adapt to the robot. The interaction with robots in public places is also spontaneous, which precludes extensive preparations on a person’s side (e.g., reading an operation manual). Thus, connecting with modes of interaction people are already familiar with is critical for robots operating in public places. In the context of spontaneous short-term interaction, we conjecture that certain humanoid features can greatly enhance the effectiveness of a robot. In particular, we believe that human-like physical shape and behavior facilitates the communication from robots to people, and also increases a robot’s task effectiveness.