Development of user interface for humanoid service robot system

METI has launched a national 5-year-project called Humanoid Robotics Project (HRP) since 1998 FY. Because humanoid robots have a human-like figure and can walk in a biped way and can take an action like a human being, we consider applying the humanoid robot platform in HRP to service fields of caring people such as the elderly, patients, etc. Taking the technical limitation of the current humanoid robot into account, we assume a situation where the robot serves such people. We regard the robot as users´ avatar or another existence of users, and consider the class of users: a nurse, a patient, and a person in a remote site. This allows us to propose four types of user interfaces for the humanoid service robot system: an on/off-line user interface for a nurse who wants to control the robot as his avatar, a user interface for a patient who wants to control the robot as another existence, and a user interface for a person in a remote site who wishes to control the robot as his avatar. These user interfaces are described in this paper.