Design and Evaluation of a Nonverbal Communication Platform between Assistive Robots and their Users

摘要

Inevitably, assistive robotics will become integral to the everyday lives of a human population that is increasingly mobile, older, urban-centric and networked. How will we communicate with such robots, and how will they communicate with us? We make the case for a relatively "artificial" mode of nonverbal human-robot communication [NVC] to avoid unnecessary distraction for people, busily conducting their lives via human-human, natural communication. We propose that this NVC be conveyed by familiar lights and sounds, and elaborate here early experiments with our NVC platform in a rehabilitation hospital. Our NVC platform was perceived by medical staff as a desirable and expedient communication mode for human-robot interaction [HRI] in clinical settings, suggesting great promise for our mode of human-robot communication for this and other applications and environments involving intimate HRI.