Listening to vs overhearing robots in a hotel public space

Abstract

This report presents a preliminary work performed using robots with different social interactive functionalities in a hotel public space in order to investigate human-robot interaction (HRI). We developed robots that enable two types of interaction: (i) Twin robots (Gemini) engage in a conversation with body gestures, and hotel guests can receive information through overhearing the robots' conversation. (ii) A smaller-sized robot (Palro) detects the presence of guests and greets them directly. In both cases, guest-behavior is studied by using four categories that define the level of a guest's response toward the robots. Several significant differences among the levels of attention paid by the guests to the robots are observed in the experiments.