Somebody help me, please?!” Interaction Design Framework for Needy Mobile Service Robots*

Abstract

Most humans expect robots to function autonomously and properly. Yet, even reliable robots need human help every now and then and must “ask” for assistance. This paper presents the development of an interaction framework for designing robots requesting help from time to time performing their original task. Based on a broad literature review, basic principles for help requests in human-human interaction (HHI) and human-robot interaction (HRI) are used to design a checklist. Starting from this checklist, the examples of two robots (service vs. industrial) are used to demonstrate the framework principles. At last we discuss the usefulness of this checklist and reflect the critical impact of implicit contradictions between its principles and of technological evolutions like artificial intelligence (AI).