Talking About Task Progress: Towards Integrating Task Planning and Dialog for Assistive Robotic Services

摘要

The use of service robots to assist ageing peoplein their own homes has the potential to allow peopleto maintain their independence, increasing their healthand quality of life. In many assistive applications, robotsperform tasks on people’s behalf that they are unable orunwilling to monitor directly. It is important that usersbe given useful and appropriate information about taskprogress. People being assisted in homes and other realworldenvironments are likely be engaged in other activitieswhile they wait for a service, so information shouldalso be presented in an appropriate, nonintrusive manner.This paper presents a human-robot interaction experimentinvestigatingwhat type of feedback people prefer in verbalupdates by a service robot about distributed assistive services.People found feedback about time until task completionmore useful than feedback about events in taskprogress or no feedback. We also discuss future researchdirections that involve giving non-expert users more inputinto the task planning process when delays or failures occurthat necessitate replanning or modifying goals.