Demonstration experiments of a distributed questionnaire service using multiple robots with the aim of marketing at a tourist site

Abstract

Recently, the concern with tourism destination marketing, which is conducted marketing research from a tourism destination view point, has been growing. We have proposed a distributed questionnaire service using multiple robots, with the aim of application to marketing at a tourist site and an exhibition. In this paper, we described the problem of conducting a questionnaire service using robots in a crowded space, which was obtained from the demonstration experiment in FY 2015. In order to solve these problems, we proposed (1) a mechanism that enables the respondent to answer the questionnaire displayed on the robot with a smartphone, (2) a mechanism that dynamically generates a questionnaire according to the questionnaire collection process, (3) improvement of robot motion and interaction as a calling function and a nodding function. Moreover, we implemented these as a distributed questionnaire service using multiple robots and conducted demonstration experiments at international conferences EAIS 2016, Japan Robot Week 2016, and Fukagawa museum road shopping street, and verified the effectiveness of our proposals.