How Can a Robot Signal Its Incapability to Perform a Certain Task to Humans in an Acceptable Manner?

In this paper, a robot that is using politeness to overcome its incapability to serve is presented. The mobile robot “Alex” is interacting with human office colleagues in their environment and delivers messages, phone calls, and companionship. The robot's battery capacity is not sufficient to survive a full working day. Thus, the robot needs to recharge during the day. By doing so it is unavailable for tasks that involve movement. The study presented in this paper supports the idea that an incapability of fullfiling an appointed task can be overcome by politeness and showing appropriate behaviour. The results, reveal that, even the simple adjustment of spoken utterances towards a more polite phrasing can change the human's perception of the robot companion. This change in the perception can be made visible by analysing the human's behaviour towards the robot

Mecanismo de previsão de perda de deadline para a navegação de robôs móveis autônomos

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico, Programa de Pós -Graduação em Computação, Florianópolis, 2014A robótica móvel vem ganhando um papel cada vez mais importante na sociedade moderna. Várias tarefas potencialmente perigosas ou penosas para o ser humano são atribuídas a robôs móveis, que são cada vez mais capazes. Muitas dessas tarefas precisam ser realizadas dentro de um prazo determinado, ou seja, devem cumprir um deadline. A perda desse deadline pode resultar em sérios prejuízos financeiros e/ou materiais. Assim sendo, mecanismos para prever a perda do deadline dessas tarefas são fundamentais, pois permitem que ações corretivas possam ser executadas no sentido de evitar ou minimizar os prejuízos decorrentes da perda do deadline. Neste trabalho, é proposto um mecanismo de previsão de perda de deadline confiável para robôs móveis autônomos. O mecanismo é capaz de prever a perda de deadline de uma determinada tarefa através da utilização de dados armazenados de execuções anteriores de tarefas similares. Foi utilizado o robô Pioneer 3-DX para experimentos e simulações, um dos robôs mais populares na academia. O mecanismo mostrou-se bastante eficaz e com alta taxa de previsão correta tanto em ambientes simulados quanto em ambientes reais.Abstract: Mobile robotics is gaining an increasingly important role in modern society. Several potentially dangerous or laborious tasks for human are assigned to mobile robots, which are increasingly capable. Many of these tasks need to be performed within a specified period, i.e, meet a deadline. Missing the deadline can result in financial and/or material losses. Therefore, mechanisms for predicting the missing of deadlines are fundamental because corrective actions can be taken to avoid or minimize the losses resulting from missing the deadline. In this work we propose a simple but reliable deadline missing prediction mechanism for mobile robots through the use of historical data and we use the Pioneer 3-DX robot for experiments and simulations, one of the most popular robots in academia. The mechanism proved to be very effective and with a high correct prediction rate, both in simulated environments and in real environments