Iterative Robot Waiter Algorithm Design: Service Expectations and Social Factors

Abstract

Mobile robots carrying food in restaurants are here. What service behavior norms do people expect them to follow? This paper evaluates robot waiter algorithms and service parameters for a robot serving two participants at a simulated cocktail event, varying body-storming inspired context variables such as: "hunger level" and "relationship to each other," robot delivery algorithms (lead, follow, ambient), and participant pose (standing, seated). In the within-subjects design, pairs of people were given a series of context prompts, and told to participate as felt natural. Output variables included whether they took food and post-trial survey ratings of the robot. The results show a positive correlation between food taking (or feelings of obligation to take food) and human OR robot initiative, relative to a mixed-ambient algorithm with no explicit leader. The robot waiter that initiates is the clearest and most noticeable. There were also some challenges: people in conversation would sometimes forget or delay calls for cupcakes, ambient robot motion was hardest to notice, and bringing food one person ordered to the other was unforgivable. When in doubt, go to the middle. Finally, participants enjoyed the robot spinning, describing it as a dessert tray which attracted their eyes to the robot.