Long-term large scale human-robot interaction platform through immersive VR system - Development of RoboCup @Home Simulator-

Research on high level human-robot interaction systems that aims skill acquisition, concept learning, modification of dialogue strategy and so on requires large-scaled experience database based on social and embodied interaction experiments. However, if we use real robot systems, costs for development of robots and performing many experiments will be too huge. If we choose virtual robot simulator, limitation arises on embodied interaction between virtual robots and real users. We thus propose an enhanced robot simulator that enables multiuser to connect to central simulation world, and enables users to join the virtual world through immersive user interface. As an example task, we propose an application to RoboCup @Home tasks. In this paper we explain configuration of our simulator platform and feasibility of the system in RoboCup @Home.