Towards a Social Robot as Interface for Tourism Recommendations

Robot and Human …, 2007

The paper introduces an online user study on applications for social robots with 127 participants. The potential users proposed 570 application scenarios based on the appearance and functionality of four robots presented (AIBO, BARTHOC, BIRON, iCat). The items were grouped into 13 categories which are interpreted and discussed by means of four dimensions: public vs. private use, intensity of interaction, complexity of interaction model, and functional vs. human-like appearance. The interpretation lead to three classes of applications for social robots according to the degree of social interaction: (1) Specialized Applications where the robot has to perform clearly defined tasks which are delegated by a user, (2) Public Applications which are directed to the communication with many users, and (3) Individual Applications with the need of a highly elaborated social model to maintain a variety of situations with few people.

Social robots have emerged as a promising technology that interacts with people in various social contexts. These robots are designed to engage with individuals in a human-like manner, providing companionship, assistance, and entertainment. This paper examines the concept of social robots, exploring their capabilities, applications, and the impact they have on human lives. Additionally, the ethical considerations surrounding the use of social robots are addressed, including issues of privacy, autonomy, and the potential displacement of human jobs. The paper concludes by highlighting the potential benefits and limitations of social robots in society, emphasizing the importance of considering human responses and preferences.

2022

A social robot is an autonomous robot that interact with people by engaging in socialemotive behaviors, skills, capacities, and rules attached to its collaborative role. In order to achieve these goals we believe that modeling the interaction with the user and adapt the robot behavior to the user herself are fundamental for its social role. This paper presents our first attempt to integrate user modeling features in social and affective robots. We propose a cloud-based architecture for modeling the user-robot interaction in order to reuse the approach with different kind of social robots. Human Robot Interaction, User modeling, Affective Interaction 1 Introduction A social robot is an autonomous robot that interact with people by engaging in social-emotive behaviors, skills, capacities, and rules related to its collaborative

Proceedings of the 10th Asia Pacific Conference on Computer Human Interaction, 2012

This paper proposes to put domestic robots as buddies on our contact lists, thereby extending the use of social media in interpersonal interaction further to human-robot interaction (HRI). In detail, we present a robot management system that employs complementary social media platforms for human to interact with the vacuuming robot Roomba, and a surveillance robot which is developed in this paper on top of an iRobot Create. The social media platforms adopted include short message services (SMS), instant messenger (MSN), online shared calendar (Google Calendar), and social networking site (Facebook). Hence, our system can provide a rich set of user-familiar, intuitive and highly-accessible interfaces, allowing users to flexibly choose their preferred tools in different situations. An in-lab experiment and a multi-day field study are also conducted to study the characteristics and strengths of each interface, and to investigate the users' perception to the robots and behaviors in choosing the interfaces during the course of HRI.

2020

A social robot is an autonomous robot that interact with people by engaging in socialemotive behaviors, skills, capacities, and rules attached to its collaborative role. In order to achieve these goals we believe that modeling the interaction with the user and adapt the robot behavior to the user herself are fundamental for its social role. This paper presents our first attempt to integrate user modeling features in social and affective robots. We propose a cloud-based architecture for modeling the user-robot interaction in order to reuse the approach with different kind of social robots. Human Robot Interaction, User modeling, Affective Interaction

Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction. Aging and Assistive Environments, 2014

This paper presents a low-cost social robot, called Philos, and human-robot interaction (HRI) design. The system is accompanied with a user interface that allows customization of interactive functions and real-time monitoring. The robot features eight degrees of freedom that can generate various gestures and facial expressions. HRI is realized by two elements, internal characteristics of the robot and external vision/touch inputs provided by the users. Internal characteristics determine the predefined personality of Philos among the five: Friendly, Hyperactive, Shy, Cold, or Sensitive, and set the behavioral control parameters accordingly. Vision-based interaction includes face tracking, face recognition, and motion tracking. Embedded touch sensors detect physical touch-based interaction. Behavioral parameters are updated in real time based on the user inputs, and therefore Philos can engage each user in personalized interaction via uniquely defined behavioral responses. The cost of Philos is estimated to be relatively low compared to other commercially available robots promising a broad range of potential applications for domestic and professional use.

2019

In this paper we investigate the use of a social robot as an interface for providing personalized information about nutrition. In particular, we evaluated the effect of message adaptation to some demographic traits that are automatically recognized by a social robot, Pepper in this case. The proposed approach is based on soft biometrics and it can estimate several traits simultaneously, such as gender and age of people in the field of view of the robot. Our hypothesis is that adding this capability to a social robot improves the persuasive effects, in terms of perceived informational quality, motivational strength and social believability, and the recall of the message. We performed a preliminary experimental study and its results seem to support the persuasiveness of the personalized nutritional coach.

HCI addresses to the concept of Human-Machine communication through including but not limited to AI-enabled embodied conversational software agents. The emergence of these agents has changed the history of computing and robotics once and for all. One of the most prominent social and intellectual qualities in humans is the ability to have conversations. Typically, a conversation takes place between people through verbal and non-verbal mediums. Languages play a vital role in these communications and conversations. Humanness and human-like interaction qualities are found to be in the core of the human-computer interface designs from the beginning of this research doctrine [1]. Programming languages has enabled computer scientists to establish a connection between humans and machines that enables the machine to understand the instructions given. However, the widespread use of cell phones, computers and other smart gadgets has clearly made it a demand of time that the machines used today can understand the commands given in natural languages (i.e. English, German, Spanish, etc.) as the user set is not limited to the computer scientists anymore[1]. Hence, robotics, natural language processing, machine learning, artificial intelligence, etc. has combined force to bridge the communication gap between the machines and the users. From ELIZA [3], Rea [4] to Siri, Amazon Alexa or Google assistant, the software interfaces has come a long way through a lengthy development process. They have proven to have enough influence to change the social, economic and political outcomes through their intelligent behavior [2]. The boundary between human-like and bot-like behavior is greyer then it is black and white [2]. The software interfaces has changed their appearance over the time by stripping down from the ideals of face-to-face conversations. The chatbots (i.e. Twitter bots) found online has developed different social media ecosystems [2] where humans and robots interact with each other in the same plane. To have a conversation or interaction with the machines humans are being trained to accept and use a new set of vocabularies [1]. In this paper, I would like to discuss how these conversational agents and social robots are shaping our social media ecosystems. I will revisit the interrelation between humans and machines while focusing on the socio-cultural impact of these robots into our IoT –enabled smart homes and online virtual spaces.

International Journal of Social Robotics

In recent years, in response to the effects of Covid-19, there has been an increase in the use of social robots in service organisations, as well as in the number of interactions between consumers and robots. However, it is not clear how consumers are valuing these experiences or what the main drivers that shape them are. Furthermore, it is an open research question whether these experiences undergone by consumers can be affected by their own personality. This study attempts to shed some light on these questions and, to do so, an experiment is proposed in which a sample of 378 participants evaluate a simulated front-office service experience delivered by a social robot. The authors investigate the underlying process that explains the experience and find that cognitive-functional factors, emphasising efficiency, have practically the same relevance as emotional factors, emphasising stimulation. In addition, this research identifies the personality traits of the participants and explor...

ACM Digital Library, 2023

This research is focused on the utilization of artificially intelligent (AI), customer service chatbots in travel, tourism and hospitality. Rigorous criteria were used to search, screen, extract and synthesize articles on conversational, automated systems. The results shed light on the most cited articles on the use of "chatbots" and "tourism" or "hospitality". The researchers scrutinize the extracted articles, synthesize the findings and outline the pros and cons of using these interactive technologies. This contribution implies that there is scope for tourism businesses to continue improving their online customer services in terms of their efficiency and responsiveness to consumers and prospects. For the time being, AI chatbots are still not in a position to replace human agents in all service interactions as they cannot resolve complex queries and complaints. However, works are in progress to improve their verbal, vocal and anthropomorphic capabilities to deliver a better consumer experience.