Social Common Sense Modeling of a Spread-out Queue in Public Space for a Service Robot

This paper describes method to model social common sense for an interactive robot that provides customers in a spread-out queue with a service in a public space. Interactive robots that provide services in a public space, such as handing out flyers or touting, have been developed. To provide such services, robot behavior must be appropriate, i.e., comparable to that of a human. Such appropriate behavior is based on social common sense, which is a human concept. However, modeling social common sense when a human provides a service in public space is difficult. This paper focuses on a service, e.g., handing out flyers, provided by a robot to customers waiting in a queue where the order of the queue is unclear. By modeling the unconscious order of the queue as social common sense, we develop a robot that can provide a service in an appropriate order. To model the unconscious order of the queue, the human order is defined by the geometric relationship between a human and a robot and the queue order that an individual recognizes. Through an experiment conducted in a public space, we confirm that the robot with the modeled common sense hands out flyers to customers in an appropriate order. In addition, the robot can give advice to a customer who cuts into the line.