A step towards a sociable robot guide which monitors and adapts to the person's activities

Abstract

This paper presents a framework for a mobile robot guide, which provides the human with the flexibility to decide upon the way he wants to be guided. During the guiding process at any instant, the exploratory nature of the human, the social behavior and the individual's desires contribute to the position of the person with respect to the robot. For a robot to behave socially, it should not expect that the human will always follow the exact trajectory of the robot or will always maintain a fixed distance with robot. Depending upon the human's will and desire, he can choose either to accompany or to follow the robot during the guiding. To give more privilege to human, robot should also not expect that human will always support the guiding. Human may temporarily suspend the joint commitment of guiding process, due to other interesting tasks and may completely abandon the path expected by robot. Also sometimes the structure of the environment could enforce separation or hide the human. As a ‘social’ guide, robot should not only tolerate human diverse behavior but also try to adapt its path to support the human activity as well as influence the human path towards the goal. It should take appropriate decisions about when, where and how to deviate, as the very frequent or unnatural maneuvers of robot will make the human feel uncomfortable. In this paper we present a framework of monitoring and adapting to the human commitment on the joint task, and carrying out appropriate and goal oriented re-engagement attempts, if required, from the view point of guiding.