User Intent Communication in Robot-Assisted Shopping for the Blind

Abstract

This paper discussed user intent communication in robot-assisted shopping for the blind. Three intent communication modalities (typing, speech, and browsing) are evaluated in a series of experiments with 5 blind and 5 sighted, blindfolded participants on a public online database of 11,147 household products. The mean selection time differed significantly among the three modalities, but the lack of interactions indicated that the modality differences did not vary significantly between blind and sighted, blindfolded groups, nor among individual participants. Though it was seen that speech was the fastest, in real life, the shopper may prefer to use typing as it helps to be more discrete in a public place like a supermarket. A hybrid interface might be desirable. If the exact intention is not known, i.e. when the shopper does not know what she wants to buy, an interface with a strong coupling of browsing and searching is an option. Since it is difficult to evaluate how such a hybrid interface would perform in real life, evaluating the components independently, as was done in this paper, gives us insights into how user intent should be communicated in robotassisted shopping for the blind.