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Capturing Expertise: Developing Interaction Content for a Robot Through Teleoperation by Domain Experts

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Abstract

The development of humanlike service robots which interact socially raises a new question: how can we create good interaction content for such robots? Domain experts specializing in the target service have the knowledge for making such content. Yet, while they can easily engage in good face-to-face interactions, we found it difficult for them to prepare conversational content for a robot in written form. Instead, we propose involving experts as teleoperators in a short-cycle iterative development process in which the expert develops content, teleoperates a robot using that content, and then revises the content based on that interaction. We propose a software system and design guidelines to enable such an iterative design process. To validate these solutions, we conducted a comparison experiment in the field, with a teleoperated robot acting as a guide at a tourist information center in Nara, Japan. The results showed that our system and guidelines enabled domain experts with no robotics background to create better interaction content and conduct better interactions than domain experts without our system.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of Japan. We wish to thank the staff at the Nara City Tourist information center, and the members of the NPO “Suzaku” for their helpful participation. We also wish to thank Satoshi Koizumi and Masaya Shimoyama for their help.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories, 2-2-2 Hikaridai, Keihanna Science City, Kyoto, Japan

    Kanae Wada, Dylan F. Glas, Masahiro Shiomi, Takayuki Kanda & Norihiro Hagita

  2. Faculty of Science and Engineering, Osaka University, 1-3, Machikaneyama, Toyonaka, Osaka, Japan

    Hiroshi Ishiguro

Authors
  1. Kanae Wada
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  2. Dylan F. Glas
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  3. Masahiro Shiomi
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  4. Takayuki Kanda
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  5. Hiroshi Ishiguro
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  6. Norihiro Hagita
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Correspondence to Dylan F. Glas.

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Wada, K., Glas, D.F., Shiomi, M. et al. Capturing Expertise: Developing Interaction Content for a Robot Through Teleoperation by Domain Experts. Int J of Soc Robotics 7, 653–672 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-015-0288-9

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