Simultaneous teleoperation of multiple social robots

  • Authors:

  • Dylan F. Glas;Takayuki Kanda;Hiroshi Ishiguro;Norihiro Hagita

  • Affiliations:

  • ATR, Keihanna Science City, Japan;ATR, Keihanna Science City, Japan;Osaka University, Suita, Japan;ATR, Keihanna Science City, Japan

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 3rd ACM/IEEE international conference on Human robot interaction
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

Teleoperation of multiple robots has been studied extensively for applications such as robot navigation; however, this concept has never been applied to the field of social robots. To explore the unique challenges posed by the remote operation of multiple social robots, we have implemented a system in which a single operator simultaneously controls up to four robots, all engaging in communication interactions with users. We present a user inter-face designed for operating a single robot while monitoring several others in the background, then we propose methods for characterizing task difficulty and introduce a technique for improving multiple-robot performance by reducing the number of conflicts between robots demanding the operator's attention. Finally, we demonstrate the success of our system in laboratory trials based on real-world interactions.