Analyzing the Human-Robot Interaction Abilities of a General-Purpose Social Robot in Different Naturalistic Environments

Abstract

The main goal of this article is to report and analyze the applicability of a general-purpose social robot, developed in the context of the RoboCup @Home league, in three different naturalistic environments: (i) home, (ii) school classroom, and (iii) public space settings. The evaluation of the robot’s performance relies on its degree of social acceptance, and its abilities to express emotions and to interact with humans using human-like codes. The reported experiments show that the robot has a large acceptance from expert and nonexpert human users, and that it is able to successfully interact with humans using human-like interaction mechanisms, such as speech and visual cues (particularly face information). It is remarkable that the robot can even teach children in a real classroom.