“I will ask you” choosing answerers by observing gaze responses using integrated sensors for museum guide robots

This paper presents a method in a museum guide robot to choose an appropriate answerer among multiple visitors. First, we observed and videotaped scenes of gallery talk when human guides ask visitors questions. Based on an analysis of this video, we have found that the guides selects an answerer by distributing his or her gaze towards multiple visitors and observing the visitors´ gaze responses during the question. Then, we performed experiments on a robot that distributes its gaze towards multiple visitors, and analyzed visitors´ responses. From these experiments, we found that visitors who are asked questions by the robot felt embarrassed when he or she had no prior knowledge about the questions, and that visitor gaze during the questions plays an important role in avoiding being asked questions. Based on these findings, we have developed a function in a guide robot that observes visitor gaze response and selects an appropriate answerer based on these responses. Gaze responses are tracked and recognized using an omnidirectional camera and a laser range sensor. The effectiveness of our method was confirmed through experiments.