Establishment of spatial formation by a mobile guide robot

A mobile museum guide robot is expected to establish a proper spatial formation with the visitors. After observing the videotaped scenes of human guide-visitors interaction at actual museum galleries, we have developed a mobile robot that can guide multiple visitors inside the gallery from one exhibit to another. The mobile guide robot is capable of establishing spatial formation known as “F-formation” at the beginning of explanation. It can also use a systematic procedure known as “pause and restart” depending on the situation through which a framework of mutual orientation between the speaker (robot) and visitors is achieved. The effectiveness of our method has been confirmed through experiments.