Visiting Cultural Heritage with a Tour Guide Robot: A User Evaluation Study in-the-Wild

Abstract

In this paper we present a user evaluation study on location at the Royal Alcázar in Seville, Spain, with the fully autonomous tour guide robot FROG. In this robot, technological innovations in navigation and vision were integrated with state-of-the-art design for robot behavior in order to provide interactive tours and adaptive content to visitors. In our user evaluation study we aimed to gain insights in user experiences of and attitudes and responses towards this fully autonomous social robot. Such studies are important, because they provide information about how people interact with social robots outside a controlled setting. Invited as well as spontaneous visitors followed tours guided by FROG and were interviewed about their opinions and experiences. Our findings indicate that even if isolated technical features work perfectly in controlled settings, they might not work well in the integrated system, because naïve people interact with the system in an unforeseen manner.