Navigation with a Cooperative Social Robot for a Group of Visitors using Face Detection and a ‘Stop and Wait’ Scheme

The work is on the use of a robot as a guide that takes visitors for a guided tour around a facility. A past project of the research group proposed a robot guide that enacted a pre-recorded tour, however, had a limited applicability as the humans rarely followed the guided tour and the robot did not respond to the movement of the visitors. A robotic guide must ensure that it takes the visitors along, who are not left behind, while typically maintaining comforting distances from the visitor. The width and height of the human face is computed which is inversely proportional to the distance of the person from the robot. Further, we construct a method which guides visitors cooperatively. The robot moves sequentially to different locations with the visitors, and if any visitor is found missing, the robot stops and waits for that visitor. When the visitor becomes visible, the robot resumes the journey. The robot moves and navigates as a guide for a group of visitors maintaining appropriate distances from the visitor using the distance measurement methodology. The results are demonstrated by making the robot take visitors on a guided tour of the Robotics and Machine Intelligence Laboratory. The robot waits if a visitor leaves the group for calls or any other reason, while also waits if the visitors lag behind. The work demonstrates the ability of a robot to be socially complaint while taking a group of visitors on a guided tour.