Mobile Robot with Preliminary-announcement and Display Function of Forthcoming Motion using Projection Equipment

This paper discusses the mobile robot PMR-5 with the preliminary-announcement and display function which indicates the forthcoming operations to the people near the robot by using a projector. The projector is set on a mobile robot and a 2D frame is projected on a running surface. In the frame, not only the scheduled course but also the states of operation can be clearly announced as the information about movement. We examine the presentation of the states of operation such as stop or going back including the time information of the scheduled course on the developed robot. Scheduled course is expressed as the arrows considering the intelligibility at sight. Arrow expresses the direction of motion directly and the length of arrow can announce the speed of motion. Operation until 3-second-later is indicated and three arrows classified by color for each second are connected and displayed so these might show the changing of speed during 3-second period. The sign for spot revolution and the characters for stop and going back are also displayed. We exhibited the robot and about 200 visitors did the questionnaire evaluation. The average of 5-stage evaluation is 3.9 points and 4.5 points for the direction of motion and the speed of motion respectively. So we obtained the evaluation that it is intelligible in general