Refine
Year of publication
- 2021 (2)
Document Type
Language
- English (2)
Has Fulltext
- no (2)
Is part of the Bibliography
- no (2)
Keywords
- gaze (1)
- human–robot interaction (1)
- incrementalit (1)
- initiating interaction (1)
- mobile robots (1)
- personalization (1)
- proactive control (1)
- service robots (1)
- socially aware navigation (1)
- voice (1)
Institute
Begutachtungsstatus
- peer-reviewed (2)
The SMOOTH-robot is a mobile robot that-due to its modularity-combines a relatively low price with the possibility to be used for a large variety of tasks in a wide range of domains. In this article, we demonstrate the potential of the SMOOTH-robot through three use cases, two of which were performed in elderly care homes. The robot is designed so that it can either make itself ready or be quickly changed by staff to perform different tasks. We carefully considered important design parameters such as the appearance, intended and unintended interactions with users, and the technical complexity, in order to achieve high acceptability and a sufficient degree of utilization of the robot. Three demonstrated use cases indicate that such a robot could contribute to an improved work environment, having the potential to free resources of care staff which could be allocated to actual care-giving tasks. Moreover, the SMOOTH-robot can be used in many other domains, as we will also exemplify in this article.
In this paper, we present a study in which a robot initiates interactions with people passing by in an in-the-wild scenario. The robot adapts the loudness of its voice dynamically to the distance of the respective person approached, thus indicating who it is talking to. It furthermore tracks people based on information on body orientation and eye gaze and adapts the text produced based on people's distance autonomously. Our study shows that the adaptation of the loudness of its voice is perceived as personalization by the participants and that the likelihood that they stop by and interact with the robot increases when the robot incrementally adjusts its behavior.