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"One Soy Latte for Daniel": Visual and Movement Communication of Intention from a Robot Waiter to a Group of Customers

Seung Chan Hong, Leimin Tian, Akansel Cosgun, Dana Kulić

TL;DR

A robot personalising its movement trajectory and stopping location in addition to displaying a visualisation of the order yields more accurate intent communication and successful order delivery, as well as more positive user perception towards the robot and its service.

Abstract

Service robots are increasingly employed in the hospitality industry for delivering food orders in restaurants. However, in current practice the robot often arrives at a fixed location for each table when delivering orders to different patrons in the same dining group, thus requiring a human staff member or the customers themselves to identify and retrieve each order. This study investigates how to improve the robot's service behaviours to facilitate clear intention communication to a group of users, thus achieving accurate delivery and positive user experiences. Specifically, we conduct user studies (N=30) with a Temi service robot as a representative delivery robot currently adopted in restaurants. We investigated two factors in the robot's intent communication, namely visualisation and movement trajectories, and their influence on the objective and subjective interaction outcomes. A robot personalising its movement trajectory and stopping location in addition to displaying a visualisation of the order yields more accurate intent communication and successful order delivery, as well as more positive user perception towards the robot and its service. Our results also showed that individuals in a group have different interaction experiences.

"One Soy Latte for Daniel": Visual and Movement Communication of Intention from a Robot Waiter to a Group of Customers

TL;DR

A robot personalising its movement trajectory and stopping location in addition to displaying a visualisation of the order yields more accurate intent communication and successful order delivery, as well as more positive user perception towards the robot and its service.

Abstract

Service robots are increasingly employed in the hospitality industry for delivering food orders in restaurants. However, in current practice the robot often arrives at a fixed location for each table when delivering orders to different patrons in the same dining group, thus requiring a human staff member or the customers themselves to identify and retrieve each order. This study investigates how to improve the robot's service behaviours to facilitate clear intention communication to a group of users, thus achieving accurate delivery and positive user experiences. Specifically, we conduct user studies (N=30) with a Temi service robot as a representative delivery robot currently adopted in restaurants. We investigated two factors in the robot's intent communication, namely visualisation and movement trajectories, and their influence on the objective and subjective interaction outcomes. A robot personalising its movement trajectory and stopping location in addition to displaying a visualisation of the order yields more accurate intent communication and successful order delivery, as well as more positive user perception towards the robot and its service. Our results also showed that individuals in a group have different interaction experiences.
Paper Structure (18 sections, 4 figures, 4 tables)

This paper contains 18 sections, 4 figures, 4 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Related works
  3. Motion and physical proximity in HRI
  4. Visual display for intent communication
  5. Restaurant delivery robots
  6. Methodology
  7. Hypotheses
  8. Interaction scenarios
  9. Evaluation metrics
  10. Results
  11. Order delivery accuracy
  12. Perception towards the robot and the service interaction
  13. Preference ranking
  14. Qualitative results
  15. Discussion
  16. ...and 3 more sections

Figures (4)

  • Figure 1: We study the effect of stopping location and visual indicators for a restaurant delivery scenario
  • Figure 2: Each group of three participants experienced four interactions with Temi in random orders. A 2x2 design was used to investigate influence of the robot's visual display (with/without) and stopping location (general/personal) when delivering orders to a group of customers.
  • Figure 3: Example delivery visualisation on Temi's tablet
  • Figure 4: Differences in order delivery accuracy: Combining visualisation and personalised stopping location yielded highest order delivery accuracy. Visualisation, the interaction between visualisation and stopping location, as well as the interaction between stopping location and customer role has a significant influence on order delivery accuracy.