Person identification and interaction of social robots by using wireless tags

− This paper reports a trial of immersing interactive humanoid robots into a real human society, where they are charged with the communication task of foreign language education. For this purpose, we developed interactive humanoid robots equipped with wireless person identification technology for facilitating interaction with multiple persons. We believe that the ability to identify persons allows more meaningful social relationships between robots and humans to develop. This paper discusses the fundamental mechanisms of the multi-person identification ability, and how the robots established and sustained social relationships among children in an elementary school.