Network robot systems

This article introduces the definition of Network Robot Systems (NRS) as is understood in Europe, USA and Japan. Moreover, it describes some of the NRS projects in Europe and Japan and presents a summary of the papers of this Special Issue.Peer Reviewe

An adaptive architecture for presenting interactive media onto distributed interfaces

This paper introduces an adaptive architecture for presenting interactive timed media onto distributed networked devices. The architecture is put into the test in a storytelling application for children. The interactive story is documented in StoryML, an XML-based language, and presented to multiple interface devices organized in an agent-based architecture. This allows the separation of the content from concrete physical devices, the definition of abstract media objects and the automatic adaptation of the same content to different environments of physical devices. Since both the content and the interaction are timed, issues of streaming and synchronization in this architecture are also addressed.</p

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

The Penetration of Internet of Things in Robotics: Towards a Web of Robotic Things

As the Internet of Things (IoT) penetrates different domains and application areas, it has recently entered also the world of robotics. Robotics constitutes a modern and fast-evolving technology, increasingly being used in industrial, commercial and domestic settings. IoT, together with the Web of Things (WoT) could provide many benefits to robotic systems. Some of the benefits of IoT in robotics have been discussed in related work. This paper moves one step further, studying the actual current use of IoT in robotics, through various real-world examples encountered through a bibliographic research. The paper also examines the potential ofWoT, together with robotic systems, investigating which concepts, characteristics, architectures, hardware, software and communication methods of IoT are used in existing robotic systems, which sensors and actions are incorporated in IoT-based robots, as well as in which application areas. Finally, the current application of WoT in robotics is examined and discussed