We present an ample description of a socially compliant mobile robotic platform, which is developed in the EU-funded project SPENCER. The purpose of this robot is to assist, inform and guide passengers in large and busy airports. One particular aim is to bring travellers of connecting flights conveniently and efficiently from their arrival gate to the passport control. The uniqueness of the project stems from the strong demand of service robots for this application with a large potential impact for the aviation industry on one side, and on the other side from the scientific advancements in social robotics, brought forward and achieved in SPENCER. The main contributions of SPENCER are novel methods to perceive, learn, and model human social behavior and to use this knowledge to plan appropriate actions in realtime for mobile platforms. In this paper, we describe how the project advances the fields of detection and tracking of individuals and groups, recognition of human social relations and activities, normative human behavior learning, socially-aware task and motion planning, learning socially annotated maps, and conducting empirical experiments to assess socio-psychological effects of normative robot behaviors.

No abstract

Abstract-Can you imagine a useful task you would like a social robot to perform for you? This paper presents an internet survey where participants were asked this question to identify applications for social robots. The applications mentioned by the participants are based on the appearance of four social robots (AIBO, iCat, BIRON, and BARTHOC) and the information they received about their basic capabilities. It was found that AIBO and iCat seem to be suitable for domestic applications whereas suggested applications for the more functional mobile robot BIRON are situated also in public environments. The anthropomorphic robot BARTHOC mainly seems to be appropriate for public usage. The paper tries to explain how the appearance and the capabilities of the robot influence what applications are ascribed to them. Moreover, it is shown what role domestic robots play in the field of social robotics and how they relate to public robots.Index Terms-robot applications, domestic robots.

In order to inform the design of behaviors for robots that share domestic and public spaces with people, it is important to know what robot behavior is considered as normative. The work reported in this paper stems from the premise that what is perceived as socially normative behavior for people may differ from what is considered socially normative for a robot. This paper details the development of a data collection instrument, BEHAVE-II, for assessing user responses toward a robot's behavior using both attitudinal and behavioral responses. To test the validity and reliability of the BEHAVE-II instrument, a human-robot interaction experiment was conducted in which a robot or a human invaded the personal space of a participant. We found that participants' reactions were stronger when their personal space was invaded by a robot compared with a person. This points to the fact that humans are actually highly sensible whether robots' adhere to social norms which underlines the importance of the BEHAVE-II instrument.

No abstract