Enabling a Pepper Robot to provide Automated and Interactive Tours of a Robotics Laboratory
This work addresses the technical limitations of the Pepper robot for researchers and developers, enabling new mobile applications, though it is incremental as it builds on existing robot capabilities.
The paper tackled the problem of enabling the Pepper robot to move and interact dynamically, overcoming its stationary limitations, and demonstrated the approach by successfully implementing automated and interactive tours in a robotics laboratory.
The Pepper robot has become a widely recognised face for the perceived potential of social robots to enter our homes and businesses. However, to date, commercial and research applications of the Pepper have been largely restricted to roles in which the robot is able to remain stationary. This restriction is the result of a number of technical limitations, including limited sensing capabilities, and have as a result, reduced the number of roles in which use of the robot can be explored. In this paper, we present our approach to solving these problems, with the intention of opening up new research applications for the robot. To demonstrate the applicability of our approach, we have framed this work within the context of providing interactive tours of an open-plan robotics laboratory.