Human-Like Guide Robot that Proactively Explains Exhibits

We developed an autonomous human-like guide robot for a science museum. Its identifies individuals, estimates the exhibits at which visitors are looking, and proactively approaches them to provide explanations with gaze autonomously, using our new approach called speak-and-retreat interaction. The robot also performs such relation-building behaviors as greeting visitors by their names and expressing a friendlier attitude to repeat visitors. We conducted a field study in a science museum at which our system basically operated autonomously and the visitors responded quite positively. First-time visitors on average interacted with the robot for about 9 min, and 94.74% expressed a desire to interact with it again in the future. Repeat visitors noticed its relation-building capability and perceived a closer relationship with it

Robot public speakers' effect on audience affective reaction and attention allocation

Social robots delivering public speeches have a wide range of practical applications as stand-ins for educators, experts, or entertainers. The goal of our work is to investigate how a social robot should be programmed to deliver an effective public speech. Applying a mixed methods research design to collect quantitative and qualitative data, we have conducted a study, which compares a human speaker with a semi-Anthropomorphic social robot speaker (the SoftBank Pepper robot). The robot was programmed to mimic the behaviour patterns of the human delivering the same speech. The study results show that the robot is perceived as intelligent and rational, which contributes to effective delivery of the message content. However, the robot struggles with actively engaging the audience and with establishing an emotional connection. In addition, the behavioural patterns that appear natural in the human speaker tend to be distracting in the robot. Suggestions for the improved design of robot public speakers are discussed, which include implementing rhetoric skills, exploiting and synchronising the robot's specific communication channels, and creating a robot persona

Evaluating the use of human aware navigation in industrial robot arms

Although the principles followed by modern standards for interaction between humans and robots follow the First Law of Robotics popularized in science fiction in the 1960s, the current standards regulating the interaction between humans and robots emphasize the importance of physical safety. However, they are less developed in another key dimension: psychological safety. As sales of industrial robots have been increasing over recent years, so has the frequency of human–robot interaction (HRI). The present article looks at the current safety guidelines for HRI in an industrial setting and assesses their suitability. This article then presents a means to improve current standards utilizing lessons learned from studies into human aware navigation (HAN), which has seen increasing use in mobile robotics. This article highlights limitations in current research, where the relationships established in mobile robotics have not been carried over to industrial robot arms. To understand this, it is necessary to focus less on how a robot arm avoids humans and more on how humans react when a robot is within the same space. Currently, the safety guidelines are behind the technological advance, however, with further studies aimed at understanding HRI and applying it to newly developed path finding and obstacle avoidance methods, science fiction can become science fact

Soziale Roboter, Empathie und Emotionen : eine Untersuchung aus interdisziplinärer Perspektive

Bericht: «Soziale Roboter, Empathie und Emotionen»Robots, empathy, emotions, technology assessmen