Mobile Robot with Previous Announcement of Upcoming Operation Using Face Interface

Abstract

Encounters with robots in public spaces can be uncomfortable for people who have limited or no experience in coexisting with robots, due to the lack of intuitiveness of robots' behaviors and their mechanical appearances. This paper presents a new method that a mobile robot announces its upcoming operation previously to surrounding pedestrians by rotating a robot face model made with 3D computer graphics to the direction which the robot is traveling to. The rotational direction of the robot face and the traveling direction of the robot are determined based on the Dynamic Window Approach. In the proposed method, passing-by behaviors against pedestrians and obstacles are conducted differently under the consideration of personal space, positions and velocities of pedestrians. Two kinds of experiments were conducted in which the robot traveled with and without the previous announcement. Results of two experiments indicated that the proposed method was effective to announce the robots' upcoming operation.