Ideas for HRI Task (Receptionist & Stage 2)

[LeroyR]

Is your idea/suggestion related to a problem? Please describe.

Mark down ideas for HRI Tasks. (To keep ideas from #916 for next year.)

Party/Receptionist Scenario

• Have multiple people around/front of the robot
  • The robot has to recognize the speaking person (sound source or moving lips?) to score eye contact points or match interest/ prefered drink
• Remember Persons
  • After shuffling, the host could point at one of the persons and ask the robot for name/drink/interest of that person
  • Someone can ask the robot if any person named (or likes a drink/interest) is there and ask for e.g. a description of the person
  • Describe a Person to the Robot with the robot guessing which person is talked about (do you mean NAME, point/guide to them)

[hawkina]

If this is generally about HRI tasks, I'll just copy some ideas from another thread which I had recently. These can either be new tasks entirely or maybe some of the points can be adjusted and applied to Receptionist in the future.

Interactive Cooking:
- human tells the robot what to fetch from the cupboard
- the robot has to bring the item and either hand it over to the human or pour the contents into a bowl while the human is right next to the robot, potentially even adding things to the same bowl at the same time.
- Maybe the human changed his mind about an ingredient, tells this to the robot, and the robot has to bring the item back and fetch another one
- should be possible to interrupt the robot to give it a different command
- robot should be able to open drawers and either pick-place from them or just open them to assist the user
- the robot could be mixing things while the human is holding the bowl or vice-versa

I'd always think of HRI as useful interactive assistance, but it always should go hand in hand with actually manipulating and doing things. If it's only conversation, then a robot is not needed but an Alexa is enough.

tl;dr: bring humans and robots closer together.

Vacation-assistant:
The person who enters the arena is a friend of the host, tasked to take care of the house while the host is on vacation. However, there was no time for the host to show his friend around, so now the robot has to do this. Robot greets the person at the door, shows them where they can hang their jacket and asks them what the person would like to do first, based on a list of tasks given by the host.
these tasks can be:
- water plants
- check if all doors are closed
- feed the cat
- ...
Then the user gets to pick a task, the robot will guide the person to the objects and point them out. It might be necessary to open drawers or cabinet doors in order to access the objects.
- watering plants: get the watering can from sink area (either handover or just tell person) then robot guides person to plants and watches them watering. if the person does not follow or does not tilt the can, the robot reminds them to do so.
- feed cat: grab cat food and pour it into the feeding bowl. The robot could do this but maybe he wants to be supervised
check if all doors are closed when the friend leaves. (including cupboards)
- Focus could be: ensure the person does as told e.g. recognize if they are not doing things correctly. Include more talking. e.g. person can ask the robot for more information on things at any given time. e.g. interrupt navigation or whatever they are currently doing.