Human-Robot Interaction System for Non-Expert Users in Convenience Stores using Behavior Trees

Abstract

Service robot in convenience stores is an emerging domain of a human-robot interaction system (HRI). To utilize the full efficiency of the robot and meet users’ needs in HRI, the robot has to recognize human action to decide suitable robot reactions. However, it is difficult for non-expert users (e.g., store staff) who do not have experience with robot programming to create robot behaviors and make sure that those behaviors work properly in the real robot. To solve these difficulties, we provide (i) a graphical interface to facilitate the robot behaviors creation by using Behavior Trees and (ii) a robot simulation environment to test and debug the created robot behaviors before deploying them to the real robot. By using our system, non-expert users can easily create the robot behaviors by making pairs of the detected human action to their desired robot reaction. Non-expert users also can make sure that the created robot behaviors are working without any issues with the surrounding environment via the robot simulation. We evaluate our proposed system by using the System Usability Scale (SUS) and found that the system has good usability but still has points for improvement as reported during our user study.