FusionBot: A barista robot: Fusionbot serving coffees to visitors during technology exhibition event

• Main Authors: Limbu, Dilip Kumar, Tan, Yeow Kee, Por, Lawrence T. C.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Subjects: Artificial intelligence; Background noise; barista robot; Clocks; Glass; Human robot interaction; Intelligent robots; Robustness; service robot; Service robots; Smart homes; Social robotics; Speech recognition
• ISSN: 2167-2121
• DOI: 10.1109/HRI.2010.5453172

Summary form of only given: This video shows a service robot named FusionBot autonomously serving coffees to visitors on their request, which occurred during two days-long experiment in TechFest 2008 event. The coffee serving task involves taking coffee order from a visitor, identifying a cup and smart coffee machine, moving towards the coffee machine, communicating with the coffee machine and fetching the coffee cup to the visitor. The main purpose of this experiment is to explore and demonstrate the utility of an interactive service robot in smart home environment, thereby improving the quality of human life. Before conducting the experiments, visitors were given general procedural instructions and simple introduction on how the FusionBot works. Visitors then performed experiment tasks, i.e., ordering a cup of coffee. Thereafter, the visitors were asked to fill out the satisfaction questionnaires to find out their reaction and perception on the FusionBot. Of just over 100 survey questionnaires handed out, sixty eight (68) valid responses (i.e. 68%) were received. Over all, with regards to the FusionBot task satisfaction, more than half of respondents were satisfied with what the FusionBot can do. Nearly one quarter of the respondents indicated that it was not easy to communicate with the FusionBot. This could be due to occurrence of various background noises, which were falsely picked up by the FusionBot as speech input from the visitor. Similarly, less than one quarter indicated that it was not easy to learn how to use the FusionBot. This could be due to the not knowing what to do with the FusionBot and not knowing what the FusionBot does. The experiment was successful in two main dimensions; (1) the robot demonstrated the ability to interact with visitors and perform challenging real-world task autonomously, and (2) It provided some evidence towards the feasibility of using autonomous service robot and smart coffee machine to serve drink in a reception/home or acting as a host in an organization. While preliminary, the experiment also suggests that while developing a service robot; (1) static appearance is very important, (2) requires robust speech recognition and vision understanding, and finally (3) requires comprehensive training on speech and vision with respective data.