TOWARD SOCIALLY INTELLIGENT SERVICE ROBOTS

For the past ten years, the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory (IRL) at Vanderbilt University has been developing service robots that interact naturally, closely and safely with human beings. Two main issues for research have arisen from this prior work. The first is how to achieve a high level of interaction between the human and robot. The result has been the philosophy of human directed local autonomy (HuDL), a guiding principle for research, design, and implementation of service robots. The human‐robot relationship we seek to achieve is symbiotic in the sense that both the human and the robot work together to achieve goals, for example as aids to the elderly or disabled. The second issue is the general problem of system integration, with a specific focus on integrating humans into the service robotic system. This issue has led to the development of the Intelligent Machine Architecture (IMA), a novel software architecture specifically designed to simplify the integration of the many diverse algorithms, sensors, and actuators necessary for intelligent interactive service robots.

It is expected that robots of the future will coexist and interact with humans in places such as homes and offices. In order to make the interaction of service robots with humans safe and effective, new technol ogies must be developed, ranging from physical ma terial design for robot bodies, to intelligent control lers. Simulation provides a convenient and efficient research environment for design, testing and imple mentation of service robots. This paper presents a simulated world that includes a realistic simulated human and a simulated robot which delivers and hands over an object to the human. The human is made realistic by being modeled using physiologi cal data and anthropomorphic equations of motion. The robot's design is also based upon realistic speci fications. The robot's intelligence is achieved through a number of independent software agents that con tend for the robot's behavior production, named Con tention Architecture. The proposed actions of the au tonomous agents are evaluated based on a number of criteria so as to select one action to be taken by the robot. The experimental results of the interaction between human and robot through the task of hand- over is presented. It is shown that the robot is not only capable of performing the task effectively, but is also able to compensate for the unexpected move ments of the human, while allowing no harm to come to the person through physical contact.

Purpose Drawing on the cognitive–affective–conative framework, this study aims to develop a model of service robot acceptance in the hospitality sector by incorporating both cognitive evaluations and affective responses. Design/methodology/approach A mixed-method approach combining qualitative and quantitative methods was used to develop measurement and test research hypotheses. Findings The results show that five cognitive evaluations (i.e. cuteness, coolness, courtesy, utility and autonomy) significantly influence consumers’ positive affect, leading to customer acceptance intention. Four cognitive evaluations (cuteness, interactivity, courtesy and utility) significantly influence consumers’ negative affect, which in turn positively affects consumer acceptance intention. Practical implications This study provides significant implications for the design and implementation of service robots in the hospitality and tourism sector. Originality/value Different from traditional technology acceptance models, this study proposed a model based on the hierarchical relationships of cognition, affect and conation to enhance knowledge about human–robot interactions.

Purpose: This study looks at the "Human-Technology Paradox," where large investments in Analytics and Big Data do not always lead to better investment outcomes. The research shifts focus from just the accuracy of algorithms to the important role of Human Analytical Skills in investment decision-making. Design/Methodology/Approach: Based on a systematic review developed a conceptual model to explore how four independent variables—Financial Analytics Sophistication, Analytical Tools, Access to Diverse Data, and Data Quality—affect the quality of investment decisions, with Analytical Skills acting as a mediator. The study suggests a framework where technology is not a replacement but a tool that supports human intelligence. Findings: High-quality investment decisions happen only when analytics resources are designed to improve human skills. The research identifies five main hypotheses: the positive link between analytics sophistication and human skills; the role of tools in enhancing skills; the effect of data diversity on complex processing; the importance of data quality for skill effectiveness; and the direct connection between human skills and decision-making quality. Originality/Value: This paper addresses a notable gap in research by highlighting Human Analytical Skills as a vital link between advanced technology and strategic success. It offers a guide to move past merely adopting technology towards a model that promotes collaboration between humans and machines, ensuring that data-driven insights effectively lead to sustained profitability and strategic flexibility.

With the development of medical technology, hospitalization has become a common treatment. Aiming at the complicated and cumbersome phenomenon of medical work, an intelligent medical service robot is designed and manufactured in this article. The intelligent service robot adopts STM32 and raspberry pi as the core controller and establishes the path planning under SLAM algorithm based on ROS system. After putting the items to be transported into the storage box, the user can control them by directly issuing voice commands or using mobile APP. The driving part of the robot adopts a two-wheel differential motion chassis to realize the autonomous path planning and steering obstacle avoidance of the robot. This intelligent service robot has the advantages of small size, low cost and strong scalability. It can well reduce the labor intensity of medical staff and has a good development prospect.

Recently, various service robot systems are introduced and offer the guidance and delivery service. However, most of them are operated on a single floor, because they do not consider the elevator environment. In this paper, we present the navigation strategy for multi-floor environment including elevator situation. Firstly, we propose the recognition method of the button and the floor number so that the robot reacts flexibly to a current elevator status. We apply adaptive threshold method to a current image in order to get a binary image and make the candidates of the button and the floor number using additional filtering method. By rejecting weak candidates using the artificial neural network, we finally get the position of button and current floor number. Secondly, we suggest the path planning algorithm for navigating in the elevator. By constructing an occupancy grid map of the inner part of the elevator, we calculate the optimal position to move and make a shortest path using the distance transform.

The ongoing implementation of Industry 4.0 in all segments of society will improve many aspects of human life and initiate many changes in business, production processes, and supply chains from raw materials to finished products. The implementation of new business methods leads to the transformation of production models and production processes, consumption, transport, and supply. Industry 4.0 enables the adaptation of production processes in the industry to full intelligent automation. In other words, it enables the introduction of self-automation, self-configuration, self-diagnosis and solution, knowledge, and intelligent decision-making, owing to the innovations and their implementation in robotics, smart sensors, 3D printers, Internet of Things (IoT), and Big Data technology. The essential quality shift in the implementation of Industry 4.0 in production processes is the implementation of AGV service robots (automatically guided vehicles) in the automation of transport operations in the production process itself (such as transport of raw materials, semi-products, and finished products), on assembly lines, storage of finished products and supply of finished products. The implementation of service robots in the production process is amortized very quickly if they are in operation for 24 h, while the investments can pay off in 2–3 years, and the system operates for about 15 years. The availability of work itself is about 98.5%. The implementation of service robots optimizes production time and costs, thus providing high productivity. The paper presents the annual application of service robots in logistics and the application of AGV service robots with different structures in production processes.

This study focuses on determining the Impact of the transition to face-to-face on social intelligence among selected students of pulo national high school year 2022-2023. it aims to identify the level of student’s social intelligence in terms of Situational awareness, Presence, Authenticity, Clarity and Empathy and to describe the impact of transition to face-to-face to students’ social intelligence. The researchers chose 40 grade 9 students from Pulo National High School, Simple Random Sampling was used to select the grade 9 student-respondents from pulo national high school. The study employed quantitative research design with descriptive design. It was utilized with the use of validated and reliable selfmade survey questionnaire for the respondent’s response. The research also used descriptive analysis in analyzing and interpreting the data gathered from the survey questionnaires. The study revealed that students have a very high level of social intelligence in terms of situational awareness, presence, authenticity, clarity and empathy. In addition, the data demonstrated that students believed that shifting to face-to-face had a significant impact on their social intelligence, The researchers also proposed interventions that can furthermore promote and improve students’ social intelligence. In conclusion the researchers conclude that there is a positive impact of transitioning to faceto- face class to students’ social intelligence.

In this paper, we design, implement and apply network physical layer to 100 BaseFx optical cable interface module based on industrial ethernet protocol which is physical layer of EtherCAT that has ensure its open standard ethernet compatibility which having been provided with real time of control in network of intelligent service robot, can be process numerous data to sensor and motor control system. Through BLDC motor control performance tests, we try to propose suitability as internal network of intelligent service robot and automation system.

This paper presents a scalable software architecture based on robot operating system 2 (ROS2) for service robots. ROS2 supports the data distribution service (DDS) protocol that provides benefits such as real-time operation and security and performance enhancements. However, ROS2 still lacks task management capabilities, essential for practical robotic applications consisting of multiple threads and processes. Moreover, integrating new devices into ROS2 requires additional development effort to create specific drivers for specific devices. The proposed software architecture addresses these drawbacks and provides a simple and user-friendly programming interface for easier integrating of various devices and existing ROS2 applications. Moreover, it is designed using python with multi-processing to avoid issues related to the python global interrupt lock (GIL). To verify the developed software architecture, an application for a custom-made service robot called the SeoulTech service robot (SSR) is implemented on a Jetson Xavier NX board with various features, such as ROS2 navigation and SLAM, text-to-speech (TTS), speech recognition, and face recognition.

Multifaceted trust in tourism service robots

Purpose Along with the rapid development of the robotic technology, various service robots, such as service delivery robots, have been gradually applied in hospitality. Although previous studies have examined the advantages or future trends of service robots, the use of robotic technologies in different hotel departments or the effects of hotel robot adoption on the stay intention of consumers, limited studies investigated the emotional complexity, cognitive–analytical and emotional–social responses of service robots from the perspective of consumers, as well as their influences on consumers’ intention to stay at robot hotels. Hence, this study aims to examine emotional–cognitive–social responses of diverse service robots on consumers’ intention to stay at robot hotels. Design/methodology/approach This study adopted a mixed approach of qualitative (i.e. 18 in-depth interviews conducted with hotel technology managers) and quantitative (i.e. 449 questionnaire surveys collected among the young generation) research methods on the basis of the cognitive behavioral model. In the initial stage, descriptive statistics were presented. Thereafter, structural equation modeling was used for data analysis. Findings Findings indicated that compared with the ability in completing cognitive–analytical and emotional–social tasks, hotel service robots are more able to complete services that require high emotional complexity. Moreover, results illustrated that artificial intelligence (AI) robots significantly affect the intention of consumers to stay at robot hotels. Practical implications Hospitality practitioners can consider adopting AI robots (e.g. artificial intelligent robot for simple entertainment or communication) as their future strategic plans to enhance the intention of consumers to stay at robot hotels. Originality/value This study examined the extent to which hotel robots can overcome the shortage of robot service requiring high emotional complexity, evaluated the effectiveness of hotel robots in performing cognitive–analytical and emotional–social tasks and investigated how emotional–social-related hotel robots influence consumers’ intention to stay at robot hotels.

In this paper, an FIM (Fitness to Ideal Model) and a DLen (Description Length) based evaluation approach has been developed to measure the benefit of learning from experience to improve the robustness of the robot's behavior. The experience based mobile artificial cognitive system architecture is briefly described and adopted by a PR2 service robot within the EU-FP7 funded project RACE. The robot conducts typical tasks of a waiter. Temporal and lasting obstacles and standard table items, as shown in the demonstrations of "Deal-with-obstacles" and "Clear-table-intelligently", are being adopted in this work to test the proposed evaluation metrics, validate it on a real PR2 robot system and present the evaluation results. The relationship between the FIM and DLen has been validated. This work proposes an effective approach to evaluate a cognitive service robot system which enhances its performance by learning.

Our aim is to develop the service robot based on a systematic software engineering method, particularly for real-time, embedded and distributed systems with UML. To do so, we applied the COMET method, which is a UML-based method for the development of concurrent applications, specifically distributed and real-time applications. We describe our experience of applying the COMET/UML method to developing the service robot for the elderly, T-Rot, which is under development at CIR. Here, our emphasis was on an autonomous navigation system for the service robot, which is one of the most challenging issues and is essential in developing service robots, especially mobile service robots to help elderly people. It includes hardware integration for various sensors and actuators as well as software development and integration of modules like a path planner and a localizer.

A* algorithm is a simple, scalable, and high reliable algorithm in the path planning algorithm. For the problem that service robots have high real-time characteristic and have short calculating time for algorithm, the A* algorithm is applied to the local path planning of service robots. To further improve the response speed of the algorithm, A* algorithm is improved by adjusting selection mechanism of the open update node choice and introducing the weight of Heuristics. The simulation and experimental results show that this new method has good planning performance. Adopting this new method can significantly reduce the searching time of algorithm and meet the high real-time need of service robots.