Daphne E. Karreman

Robot etiquette: how to approach a pair of people?

Research has been carried out on robots approaching one person [1, 3, 4]. However, further research is needed on robots approaching groups of people. In the study reported in this paper, we studied participants who were paired up for a task and assessed their perception and behaviors as they were approached by a robot from various angles. On an individual level, participants liked the frontal approaches, and they disliked being approached from the back. However, we found that the presence of a task-partner influenced participants’ comfort with a robot approaching (i.e. when the robot approaches and one is standing behind the task-partner). Apart from the positioning of the individuals, the layout of the room, position of furniture and doors, also seemed to influence their experience. This pilot study was performed with a limited number of participants (N=30). However, the study offers preliminary insights into the factors that influence the choice for a robot approach direction when approaching a pair of people that are focused on a task. Categories and Subject DescriptorsH1.2 [Information Systems]: User/Machine systems – Human factorsGeneral TermsHuman Factors, Experimentation

The development and real-world deployment of FROG, the fun robotic outdoor guide

This video details the development of an intelligent outdoor Guide robot. The main objective is to deploy an innovative robotic guide which is not only able to show information, but to react to the affective states of the users, and to offer locationbased services using augmented reality. The scientific challenges concern autonomous outdoor navigation and localization, robust 24/7 operation, affective interaction with visitors through outdoor human and facial feature detection as well as engaging interactive behaviors in an ongoing non-verbal dialogue with the user.Categories and Subject DescriptorsH.1.2 User/Machine SystemsGeneral TermsDesign, Human Factors

Visiting Cultural Heritage with a Tour Guide Robot: A User Evaluation Study in-the-Wild

In this paper we present a user evaluation study on location at the Royal Alcazar in Seville, Spain, with the fully autonomous tour guide robot FROG. In this robot, technological innovations in navigation and vision were integrated with state-of-the-art design for robot behavior in order to provide interactive tours and adaptive content to visitors. In our user evaluation study we aimed to gain insights in user experiences of and attitudes and responses towards this fully autonomous social robot. Such studies are important, because they provide information about how people interact with social robots outside a controlled setting. Invited as well as spontaneous visitors followed tours guided by FROG and were interviewed about their opinions and experiences. Our findings indicate that even if isolated technical features work perfectly in controlled settings, they might not work well in the integrated system, because naive people interact with the system in an unforeseen manner.

The influence of approach speed and functional noise on users' perception of a robot

How a robot approaches a person greatly determines the interaction that follows. This is particularly relevant when the person has never interacted with the robot before. In human communication, we exchange a multitude of multimodal signals to communicate our intent while we approach others. However, most robots do not have the capabilities to produce such signals and easily communicate their intent. In this paper we propose to communicate intent when a robot approaches a person through functional noise and approach speed. Both were manipulated in a between-subjects experiment (N=40) either slowly increasing at the start of the approach and slowly decreasing when the robot reached the human or maximized at the start and abruptly stopped at the end of the approach. We analyzed questionnaires and video data from the interaction and found that particularly functional noise that in-/decreased in volume was helpful to communicate the robots intent but only in congruence with an in-/decreasing velocity.