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

  • Authors:

  • Satoru Satake;Takayuki Kanda;Dylan F. Glas;Michita Imai;Hiroshi Ishiguro;Norihiro Hagita

  • Affiliations:

  • ATR, Kyouto, Japan;ATR, Kyouto, Japan;ATR, Kyouto, Japan;ATR, Kyouto, Japan;ATR, Kyouto, Japan;ATR, Kyouto, Japan

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 4th ACM/IEEE international conference on Human robot interaction
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

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.