Real-Time Building and Comfort Data Collection Using Mobile Robots

Abstract

Post-occupancy evaluation (POE) is crucial for assessing indoor environmental quality (IEQ) and identifying areas for improvements. Traditional methods such as paper-, web-, and polling-based surveys face challenges of discontinuity, high costs, low response rates, and participation bias. To address these issues, a mobile robot platform with IEQ sensors and a touchscreen interface was developed to gather real-time feedback while monitoring built environments. A seven-day experiment in three test bed offices involving 34 participants showed that (1) compared to the email survey, the robot remarkably increased the response rate from 12.5% to 90.18%, and (2) participants found the robot useful with an average usability score of 72.8 (out of 100). Besides, among 23 valid exit survey responses, 78% preferred responding to surveys via the robot, and 87% expressed willingness to interact with it again. This study demonstrates the feasibility and usefulness of using mobile robots for continuous POE in real-world scenarios.