Robots are considered to appear in town in the near future. Recent progress of computer technologies provides various systems, which support human information processing ability in real worlds. An intelligent autonomous robot is one of such systems.
In this project, we investigate interactions between people and robots considering the robots as information media. Fundamental issues of this research are how the robot interacts with people in town, how the robot can find own purposes, and how such a system should be designed. The final goal is to build an information system for interaction with real world through the robots.
We have developed a mobile robot for both indoor and outdoor environments. This robot is our testbed to find fundamental problems on robots as information media. Our achievements and future plans are as follows.
Our experimental goal is to realize a robot that can be able to navigate and work in our campus (between our building and the university clock tower) for hours. And through this robot system, we will investigate how people and robots interact together [2].
Robotics research was started on the late 1960s, and in the late 1980s many autonomous robots have been realized. Technologies of robot elements have also been progressed and now humanoids and entertainment robots are under development. Robots are going to be in human society. In this stream of robot technology, studies on human-robot relations are important and urgent. The goal of this project is to find the role of robots in social information system, and propose how robots interact with human society.
