Behavioral Assessment of a Humanoid Robot When Attracting Pedestrians in a Mall

Abstract

Research is currently being conducted on the use of robots as human labor support technology. In particular, the service industry needs to allocate more manpower, and it will be important for robots to support people. This study focuses on using a humanoid robot as a social service robot to convey information in a shopping mall, and the types of robot behaviors were analyzed. In order to convey the information, two processes must occur. Pedestrians must stop in front of the robot, and the robot must continue the engagement with them. For the purpose of this study, three types of autonomous robot behaviors were analyzed and compared in these processes in the experiment: greeting, in-trouble, dancing behaviors. After interactions were attempted with 5,000+ pedestrians, this study revealed that the in-trouble behavior can make pedestrians stop more and stay longer. In addition, in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the robot in a real environment, the comparative results between three robot behaviors and human advertisers revealed that (1) the results of the greeting and dancing behavior are comparable to those of the humans, and (2) the performance of the in-trouble behavior in providing information tasks is higher than that of all human advertisers. These findings demonstrate that the performance of robots is comparable to that of humans in providing information tasks in a limited environment; therefore, it is expected that service robots as a labor support technology will be able to perform well in the real world.

Human-Robot Harmonious Coexistence: A Robot Navigation Framework Follows Social Norms in Dynamic Scenarios

“…Equation ( 6) performs velocity filtering to limit the expansion of social space caused by high human velocity. The constants [1,2,3] i i   , are precomputed. , [1,2,3] .…”

“…The constants [1,2,3] i i   , are precomputed. , [1,2,3] . Substituting these values into (6) yields 2 1  = .…”

“…, [1,2,3] . Substituting these values into (6) yields 2 1  = . Equation ( 6) is extended according to logarithmic arithmetic…”

“…, that is, humans allocate more attention to the front area compared to the side area, and more to the side area than the rear area, where , [1,2] i i   are constants. Here, we make the assumptions that humans typically move at velocity hw v , sprint at velocity hr v , and walking humans constitute a proportion per of the total dynamic humans in the human-robot coexistence environment.…”

“…Robots have been proven to possess the ability to navigate in dynamic environments, such as shopping malls [1], airports [2], and museums [3]. However, most navigation methods only perform obstacle avoidance for dynamic and static obstacles in the environment, lacking consideration for human comfort.…”