A semi-autonomous communication robot — A field trial at a train station

This paper reports an initial field trial with a prototype of a semi-autonomous communication robot at a train station. We developed an operator-requesting mechanism to achieve semi-autonomous operation for a communication robot functioning in real environments. The operator-requesting mechanism autonomously detects situations that the robot cannot handle by itself; a human operator helps by assuming control of the robot. This approach gives semi-autonomous robots the ability to function naturally with minimum human effort. Our system consists of a humanoid robot and ubiquitous sensors. The robot has such basic communicative behaviors as greeting and route guidance. The experimental results revealed that the operator-requesting mechanism correctly requested operator's help in 85% of the necessary situations; the operator only had to control 25% of the experiment time in the semi-autonomous mode with a robot system that successfully guided 68% of the passengers. At the same time, this trial provided the opportunity to gather user data for the further development of natural behaviors for such robots operating in real environments.