EAPSI:Design of Polite Service Robots with Human-Like Approaching Behavior

Aly Ahmed A, Charlottesville VA

Investigators

Abstract

This award will study how and when robots should approach humans to initiate an interaction. The objective is to have the robots understand who needs their help, and how to make themselves politely available to the user. The methodology of the work is a combination of analysis, research, development and experimentation. The project will be conducted in collaboration with Dr. Chi-Sheng Shih at National Taiwan University in Taipei, Taiwan, where the lab already has the capable robots to achieve the outlined functions. Robotics is an extremely important field that will shape human life in the future. The physical presence of robots and their ability to manipulate their physical environment provides both unlimited potential and extreme challenges. Without developing the user experience with robots, humans will not be able to benefit from their powerful potential. Findings of this study can be used to facilitate the design of different classes of robots such as elderly-care robots or to help children with autism and other needs. The importance of this work stems in the integration of robots in human environments; especially if the humans are regular non-technical people who wouldn?t be sure how to interact or get help from a robot. By designing the proposed model on how to approach humans, an entire subfield of Robotics called Service Robots is improved. Service robots aim to act as receptionists or as points-of-direction in settings such as hotels, malls, etc. This award under the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes program supports summer research by a U.S. graduate student and is jointly funded by NSF and the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan.