Towards an optimal design of natural human interaction mechanisms for a service robot with ancillary way-finding capabilities in industrial environments
2021-03-21
In this paper, a robot that provides way-finding services within an industrial facility (e.g., finding a person or place) and is able to naturally interact with workers is presented.
In addition to production-oriented robots, service robots with social skills can also perform a role in industrial environments, providing on-demand ancillary services that support production activities.
In this paper, a robot that provides way-finding services within an industrial facility (e.g., finding a person or place) and is able to naturally interact with workers is presented.
So as to give a more natural dimension to the robot’s verbal interaction ability and achieve acceptance from human workers, the research in this paper is directed towards the improvement of its semantic natural language interpreter, with the aim of making it able to automatically learn from new interactions.
A user study is also reported, in order to assess both the capabilities of the interpreter and the performance of the robot’s communication and way-finding abilities, paying special attention to user experience (UX), which may help identify possible design problems in further research stages.