The interaction between a robot and multiple people based on spatially mapping of friendliness and motion parameters

We aim to achieve interaction between a robot and multiple people. For this, robots should localize people, select an interaction partner, and act appropriately for him/her. It is difficult to deal with all these problems using only the sensors installed into the robots. We focus on that people use a rough interaction distance among other people . We divide this interaction area into different spaces based on both the interaction distances and sensor abilities of robots. Our robots localize people roughly within this divided space. To select an interaction partner, they map friendliness holding the interaction history onto the divided space, and integrate the sensor information. Furthermore, we developed a method for appropriately changing the motions, sizes, and speeds based on the distance. Our robots regard the divided spaces as Q-Learning states, and learn the motion parameters. Our robot interacted with 27 visitors. It localized a partner with an F-value of 0.76 through integration, which is higher than that of a single sensor. A factor analysis was performed on the results from questionnaires. Exciting and Friendly were the representatives of the first and second factors, respectively. For both factors, a motion with friendliness provided higher impression scores than that without friendliness.