Deploying social robots in museum settings: A quasi-systematic review exploring purpose and acceptability

Abstract

Social robots are increasingly used within public spaces, including museum settings. This quasi-systematic review identifies and synthesizes the evidence on social robots that have recently been deployed in museum settings. It specifically focuses on their intended purpose, their acceptability and factors important for successful human–robot interaction in this setting. Four databases (PsycINFO, SCOPUS, ACM Digital Library and IEEE Xplore) were systematically searched to retrieve literature published within the last 10 years on human–robot interaction studies with social robots deployed in museum settings. Due to the heterogeneous nature of the studies, qualitative and quantitative findings were summarized. A total of 604 items were identified, of which 12 were included in the review. Robots in 11 studies were physical and 1 was an embodied conversational agent presented as a virtual robot. In 75% of the studies ( n = 9), the purpose of the robots was to act as museum guides, while in 17% ( n = 2) they entertained visitors and in 8% ( n = 1) the robot taught visitors in a museum outreach programme. Overall, many of the robots were found to be acceptable for use within museum settings. Three main themes for successful social human–robot interaction were evident across the findings: (1) facial expressions, (2) movement and (3) communication and speech. There is a great opportunity for social robots to be deployed within museum settings, as guides, educators, entertainers or a combination thereof. State-of-the-art methods have led to the development of museum robots that are more capable of social interaction; however, more work is required to develop speech capabilities that work in the ‘wild’. Future work should combine the factors that have been identified within this review to improve human–robot interaction.

Robot service failure and recovery: Literature review and future directions

“…Unlike traditional and methodologically robust systematic review papers, we excluded the literature based on quality as the field we are looking at is a relatively new one. 11 Therefore, to collect more literature, we do not require that the corresponding papers be published in a journal or conference of a certain quality (e.g. SCI).…”

Technical Methods for Social Robots in Museum Settings: An Overview of the Literature

“…To obtain a complete robot that will guide visitors, interact with them and show them the different exhibits in a natural manner, it is essential to correctly combine these modules (navigation, perception, speech, gestures) to create complete behaviors for social robots and optimize them for museum settings to achieve multi-services (e.g. greet, educate or guide visitors [15]). This combination should enable the development of a robot that is able to integrate all the features depicted above (navigation, perception, speech, and gestures), in order to interact naturally with users.…”

“…For example, it might be interesting to enable museum guide robots to propose different exhibits to visitors according to their preferences. Some previous reviews have proposed interesting directions to improve social robots [1,2], and discuss the factors for successful HRI in museum settings extensively [15].…”

“…In alignment with the previous applications of social robots, museums could benefit from social robotics by developing robots as guides, educators, entertainers, or a mix of these services [15]. More specifically, social robots might guide people to see different exhibits [16][17][18][19][20][21] provide information on the building and employees [22], or help them visit the museum regardless of their ability to do it by themselves [23].…”

SoLo T-DIRL: Socially-Aware Dynamic Local Planner based on Trajectory-Ranked Deep Inverse Reinforcement Learning

“…Recently, service and guide robots have been deployed in museums [2], shopping malls [3] and airports [4], and are becoming an irreplaceable part of our daily life. Assistive robots are required to navigate in public spaces among people in a safe and socially acceptable manner.…”