Enthusiastic Robots make Better Contact

Elie Saad, Joost Broekens, Mark Neerincx, Koen Hindriks

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceedings/Edited volumeConference contributionScientificpeer-review

6 Citations (Scopus)
205 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

This paper presents the design and evaluation of human-like welcoming behaviors for a humanoid robot to draw the attention of passersby by following a three-step model: (1) selecting a target (person) to engage, (2) executing behaviors to draw the target's attention, and (3) monitoring the attentive response. A computer vision algorithm was developed to select the person, start the behaviors and monitor the response automatically. To vary the robot's enthusiasm when engaging passersby, a waving gesture was designed as basic welcoming behavioral element, which could be successively combined with an utterance and an approach movement. This way, three levels of enthusiasm were implemented: Mild (waving), moderate (waving and utterance) and high (waving, utterance and approach movement). The three levels of welcoming behaviors were tested with a Pepper robot at the entrance of a university building. We recorded data and observation sheets from several hundreds of passersby (N = 364) and conducted post-interviews with randomly selected passersby (N = 28). The level selection was done at random for each participant. The passersby indicated that they appreciated the robot at the entrance and clearly recognized its role as a welcoming robot. In addition, the robot proved to draw more attention when showing high enthusiasm (i.e., more welcoming behaviors), particularly for female passersby.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication2019 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IROS 2019
Place of PublicationMacau SAR, China
PublisherIEEE
Pages1094-1100
Number of pages7
ISBN (Electronic)9781728140049
ISBN (Print)978-1-7281-4004-9
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Nov 2019
Event2019 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) - The Venetian Macao, Macau, China
Duration: 4 Nov 20198 Nov 2019
Conference number: 32
https://www.iros2019.org

Publication series

NameIEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems
ISSN (Print)2153-0858
ISSN (Electronic)2153-0866

Conference

Conference2019 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)
Abbreviated titleIROS
Country/TerritoryChina
CityMacau
Period4/11/198/11/19
Internet address

Keywords

  • Human Robot Interaction
  • Robot Behaviors
  • Drawing Attention
  • social robotics
  • Enthusiastic Robots
  • Greeting Model
  • Engagement

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