research-article

A semi-autonomous communication robot: a field trial at a train station

Authors:

Masahiro Shiomi,

Daisuke Sakamoto,

Takayuki Kanda,

Carlos Toshinori Ishi,

Hiroshi Ishiguro,

Norihiro HagitaAuthors Info & Claims

HRI '08: Proceedings of the 3rd ACM/IEEE international conference on Human robot interaction

Pages 303 - 310

https://doi.org/10.1145/1349822.1349862

Published: 12 March 2008 Publication History

Abstract

This paper reports an initial field trial with a prototype of a semiautonomous communication robot at a train station. We developed an operator-requesting mechanism to achieve semiautonomous operation for a communication robot functioning in real environments. The operator-requesting mechanism autonomously detects situations that the robot cannot handle by itself; a human operator helps by assuming control of the robot.

This approach gives semi-autonomous robots the ability to function naturally with minimum human effort. Our system consists of a humanoid robot and ubiquitous sensors. The robot has such basic communicative behaviors as greeting and route guidance. The experimental results revealed that the operator-requesting mechanism correctly requested operator's help in 85% of the necessary situations; the operator only had to control 25% of the experiment time in the semi-autonomous mode with a robot system that successfully guided 68% of the passengers. At the same time, this trial provided the opportunity to gather user data for the further development of natural behaviors for such robots operating in real environments.

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Cited By

Reimann MKunneman FOertel CHindriks K(2024)A Survey on Dialogue Management in Human-robot InteractionACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction10.1145/364860513:2(1-22)Online publication date: 14-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3648605
Kim SAnthis JSebo SGrollman DBroadbent EJu WSoh HWilliams T(2024)A Taxonomy of Robot Autonomy for Human-Robot InteractionProceedings of the 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction10.1145/3610977.3634993(381-393)Online publication date: 11-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3610977.3634993
Kawahara TSaruwatari HHigashinaka RKomatani KLee A(2024)Spoken Dialogue Technology for Semi-Autonomous Cybernetic AvatarsCybernetic Avatar10.1007/978-981-97-3752-9_3(71-105)Online publication date: 15-Nov-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-3752-9_3
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Index Terms

A semi-autonomous communication robot: a field trial at a train station
1. Computer systems organization
  1. Embedded and cyber-physical systems
    1. Robotics
2. Computing methodologies
  1. Artificial intelligence
    1. Control methods
      1. Robotic planning
    2. Planning and scheduling
      1. Robotic planning

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

HRI '08: Proceedings of the 3rd ACM/IEEE international conference on Human robot interaction

March 2008

402 pages

ISBN:9781605580173

DOI:10.1145/1349822

General Chairs:
Terry Fong
NASA Ames Research Center, USA
,
Kerstin Dautenhahn
University of Hertfordshire, UK
,
Program Chairs:
Matthias Scheutz
Indiana University Bloomington, USA
,
Yiannis Demiris
Imperial College London, UK

Copyright © 2008 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 12 March 2008

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HRI '08: International Conference on Human Robot Interaction

March 12 - 15, 2008

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

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Overall Acceptance Rate 268 of 1,124 submissions, 24%

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Cited By

Reimann MKunneman FOertel CHindriks K(2024)A Survey on Dialogue Management in Human-robot InteractionACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction10.1145/364860513:2(1-22)Online publication date: 14-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3648605
Kim SAnthis JSebo SGrollman DBroadbent EJu WSoh HWilliams T(2024)A Taxonomy of Robot Autonomy for Human-Robot InteractionProceedings of the 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction10.1145/3610977.3634993(381-393)Online publication date: 11-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3610977.3634993
Kawahara TSaruwatari HHigashinaka RKomatani KLee A(2024)Spoken Dialogue Technology for Semi-Autonomous Cybernetic AvatarsCybernetic Avatar10.1007/978-981-97-3752-9_3(71-105)Online publication date: 15-Nov-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-3752-9_3
Iio TYoshikawa YIshiguro H(2023)Multi-robot cooperative behavior for reducing unnaturalness of starting a conversationAdvanced Robotics10.1080/01691864.2023.229015138:7(465-481)Online publication date: 26-Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.1080/01691864.2023.2290151
Nielsen SSkov MHansen KKaszowska A(2022)Using User-Generated YouTube Videos to Understand Unguided Interactions with Robots in Public PlacesACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction10.1145/355028012:1(1-40)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3550280
Schneiders ECheon EKjeldskov JRehm MSkov M(2022)Non-Dyadic Interaction: A Literature Review of 15 Years of Human-Robot Interaction Conference PublicationsACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction10.1145/348824211:2(1-32)Online publication date: 8-Feb-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3488242
Mahdi HAkgun SSaleh SDautenhahn K(2022)A survey on the design and evolution of social robots — Past, present and futureRobotics and Autonomous Systems10.1016/j.robot.2022.104193156:COnline publication date: 1-Oct-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.robot.2022.104193
Okafuji YOzaki YBaba JNakanishi JOgawa KYoshikawa YIshiguro H(2022)Behavioral Assessment of a Humanoid Robot When Attracting Pedestrians in a MallInternational Journal of Social Robotics10.1007/s12369-022-00907-914:7(1731-1747)Online publication date: 28-Jul-2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-022-00907-9
Kawahara TMuramatsu NYamamoto KLala DInoue K(2021)Semi-autonomous avatar enabling unconstrained parallel conversations –seamless hybrid of WOZ and autonomous dialogue systems–Advanced Robotics10.1080/01691864.2021.1928549(1-7)Online publication date: 19-May-2021
https://doi.org/10.1080/01691864.2021.1928549
Tamai AOno SYoshida TIkeda TIwaki S(2021)Guiding a Person Through Combined Robotic and Projection MovementsInternational Journal of Social Robotics10.1007/s12369-021-00798-214:2(515-528)Online publication date: 5-Jul-2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-021-00798-2
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