How to approach humans?: strategies for social robots to initiate interaction

This paper proposes a model of approach behavior with which a robot can initiate conversation with people who are walking. We developed the model by learning from the failures in a simplistic approach behavior used in a real shopping mall. Sometimes people were unaware of the robot’s presence, even when it spoke to them. Sometimes, people were not sure whether the robot was really trying to start a conversation, and they did not start talking with it even though they displayed interest. To prevent such failures, our model includes the following functions: predicting the walking behavior of people, choosing a target person, planning its approaching path, and nonverbally indicating its intention to initiate a conversation. The approach model was implemented and used in a real shopping mall. The field trial demonstrated that our model significantly improves the robot’s performance in initiating conversations. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.5.2 [Information Interfaces and Presen...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: HRI
• Authors: Satoru Satake, Takayuki Kanda, Dylan F. Glas, Michita Imai, Hiroshi Ishiguro, Norihiro Hagita
• Keywords: Approach Behavior, HRI 2009, Human Robot Interaction, Model, Real Shopping Mall