Designing Information Gathering Robots for Human-Populated Environments

M. J. Chung, A. Pronobis, M. Cakmak, D. Fox, and R. P. N. Rao, “Designing Information Gathering Robots for Human-Populated Environments,” in IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2015, pp. 5755–5762, doi: 10.1109/IROS.2015.7354194.

Abstract

Advances in mobile robotics have enabled robots that can autonomously operate in human-populated environments. Although primary tasks for such robots might be fetching, delivery, or escorting, they present an untapped potential as information gathering agents that can answer questions for the community of co-inhabitants. In this paper, we seek to better understand requirements for such information gathering robots (InfoBots) from the perspective of the user requesting the information. We present findings from two studies: (i) a user survey conducted in two office buildings and (ii) a 4-day long deployment in one of the buildings, during which inhabitants of the building could ask questions to an InfoBot through a web-based interface. These studies allow us to characterize the types of information that InfoBots can provide for their users.

BibTeX Entry

@inproceedings{chung2015iros,
  title = {Designing Information Gathering Robots for Human-Populated Environments},
  author = {Chung, Michael J. and Pronobis, Andrzej and Cakmak, Maya and Fox, Dieter and Rao, Rajesh P.N.},
  year = {2015},
  booktitle = {IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)},
  pages = {5755--5762},
  doi = {10.1109/IROS.2015.7354194},
  isbn = {978-1-4799-9994-1},
  type = {conference}
}