Human-Like Interaction Skills for the Mobile Communication Robot Robotinho

The operation of robotic tour guides in public museums leads to a variety of interactions of these complex technical systems with humans of all ages and with different technical backgrounds. Interacting with a robot is a new experience for many visitors. An intuitive user interface, preferable one that resembles the interaction between human tour guides and visitors, simplifies the communication between robot and visitors. To allow for supportive behavior of the guided persons, predictable robot behavior is necessary. Humanoid robots are able to resemble human motions and behaviors and look familiar to human users that have not interacted with robots so far. Hence, they are particularly well suited for this purpose. In this work, we present our anthropomorphic mobile communication robot Robotinho. It is equipped with an expressive communication head to display emotions. Its multimodal dialog system incorporates gestures, facial expression, body language, and speech. We describe the behaviors that we developed for interaction with inexperienced users in a museum tour guide scenario. In contrast to prior work, Robotinho communicated with the guided persons during navigation between exhibits, not only while explaining an exhibit. We report qualitative and quantitative results from evaluations of Robotinho in RoboCup@Home competitions and in a science museum.