A considerate care robot able to serve in multi-party settings

Abstract

This paper introduces a service robot that provides assisted-care, such as serving tea to the elderly in care facilities. In multi-party settings, a robot is required to be able to deal with requests from multiple individuals simultaneously. In particular, when the service robot is concentrating on taking care of a specific person, other people who want to initiate interaction may feel frustrated with the robot. To a considerable extent this may be caused by the robot's behavior, which does not indicate any response to subsequent requests while preoccupied with the first. Therefore, we developed a robot that can project the order of service in a socially acceptable manner to each person who wishes to initiate interaction. In this paper we focus on the task of tea-serving, and introduce a robot able to bring tea to multiple users while accepting multiple requests. The robot can detect a person raising their hand to make a request, and move around people using its mobile functions while avoiding obstacles. When the robot detects a person's request while already serving tea to another person, it projects that it has received the order by indicating “you are next” through a nonverbal action, such as turning its gaze to the person. Because it can project the order of service and indicate its acknowledgement of their requests socially, people will likely feel more satisfied with the robot even when it cannot immediately address their needs. We confirmed the effectiveness of this capability through an experiment in which the robot distributed snacks to participants.