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Cooperative customer navigation between robots outside and inside a retail shop—an implementation on the ubiquitous market platform

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Abstract

Applying the technologies of a network robot system, recommendation methods used in e-commerce are incorporated in a retail shop in the real world. We constructed a platform for ubiquitous networked robots that focuses on a shop environment where communication robots perform customer navigation. The platform observes customers’ purchasing behavior by networked sensors, including a laser range finder-based human position tracking system, and then controls visible-type communication robots in the environment to perform customer navigation. Two types of navigation scenarios are implemented and investigated in experiments using 80 participants. The results indicate that the participants in the cooperative navigation scenario, who interacted with communication robots located both outside and inside the shop, felt friendliness toward the robots and found it easy to understand what the robots said.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported in part by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of Japan and by the Global COE Program “Center of Human-Friendly Robotics Based on Cognitive Neuroscience” of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories, 2-2-2 Hikaridai, Keihanna Science City, Kyoto, 619-0288, Japan

    Koji Kamei, Tetsushi Ikeda, Masahiro Shiomi, Hiroyuki Kidokoro, Akira Utsumi, Kazuhiko Shinozawa, Takahiro Miyashita & Norihiro Hagita

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  1. Koji Kamei
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  2. Tetsushi Ikeda
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  3. Masahiro Shiomi
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  4. Hiroyuki Kidokoro
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  5. Akira Utsumi
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  6. Kazuhiko Shinozawa
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  7. Takahiro Miyashita
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  8. Norihiro Hagita
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Correspondence to Koji Kamei.

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Kamei, K., Ikeda, T., Shiomi, M. et al. Cooperative customer navigation between robots outside and inside a retail shop—an implementation on the ubiquitous market platform. Ann. Telecommun. 67, 329–340 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12243-012-0310-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12243-012-0310-2

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