Guidance method using laser pointer and gestures for librarian robot

Abstract

This paper presents a guidance method using a laser pointer attached to a librarian robot and gestures consist of body movements. Our librarian robot, that is fixed in an experimental environment, is able to say greeting properly based on estimation results of human behavior using a laser range finder, talk with a library user with a natural language, search books depending on a user's request. When the robot explains where a requested book is in the library, it points out a target position using a laser spot while the body and head are also turned around to the direction of the target. This makes detailed oral explanations unnecessary. However, the robot cannot always point out a target position directly using the laser pointer. So we design three types of guidance using the laser pointer and the gestures depending on the library environment. Some experimental results reveal the validity and effectiveness of our proposed guidance method using the laser pointer and some gestures for our librarian robot.