Interactive Information Support by Robot Partners Based on Informationally Structured Space

Abstract

Recently, there has been an increase in the importance of community-centric systems as a new paradigm to enhance the quality of community (QOC). Social media plays an important role in creating, sharing, and exchanging information within a community. However, assistive technologies should be developed from human-centric and community-centric points of view to realize such information support. In this paper, we discuss the use of smart devices interlocked robot partners for interactive information support similar to concierge services in hotels. The interactive information support system is composed of two main subsystems, namely robot partners and informationally structured space servers. A robot partner performs communication and interaction with people through voice recognition and gesture recognition in addition to the use of touch interfaces. The informationally structured space server receives the measurement data of human motions and personal information containing human requests and preferences from the robot partner. Next, the informationally structured space server selects and recommends shops, restaurants, and sightseeing spots to the guests and visitors through utterance and display by the robot partner. First, we explain the concept of the informationally structured space to connect a person with sensory information and propose the overall architecture of the informationally structured space. Next, we explain how to provide information support using smart devices interlocked robot partners based on the informationally structured space. In addition, we describe several social experiments on interactive information support at hotels. Finally, we discuss the effectiveness of the proposed system and the future direction of community-centric systems.