Museum guide robot with effective head gestures

We are currently developing a museum guide robot with an emphasis on nonverbal behavior in order to foster “friendly” human-robot interaction. In this paper, we discuss an interdisciplinary approach to robot guide development. We first examined head gestures of human guides through a sociological, conversational analytic approach, and discovered how human guides coordinate their head movements along with their talk when explaining exhibits. Second, we developed a robot system based on these findings. Third, we evaluated human-robot interaction through an experimental, sociological approach. The results suggest that robot head turning at interactionally significant points may lead to increased “engagement” of visitors with the robot. Based on this result, we have developed a guide robot that moves its head at interactionally significant points while monitoring visitor’s head movements.