A techno-sociological solution for designing a museum guide robot: Regarding choosing an appropriate visitor

In this paper, we present our work designing a robot that explains an exhibit to multiple visitors in a museum setting, based on ethnographic analysis of interactions between expert human guides and visitors. During the ethnographic analysis, we discovered that expert human guides employ some identical strategies and practices in their explanations. In particular, one of these is to involve all visitors by posing a question to an appropriate visitor among them, which we call the “creating a puzzle” sequence. This is done in order to draw visitors´ attention towards not only the exhibit and but also the guide´s explanation. While creating a puzzle, the human guide can monitor visitors´ responses and choose an “appropriate” visitor (i.e. one who is likely to provide an answer). Based on these findings, sociologists and engineers together developed a guide robot that coordinates verbal and non-verbal actions in posing a question or “a puzzle” that will draw visitors´ attention, and then explain the exhibit for multiple visitors. During the explanation, the robot chooses an “appropriate” visitor. We tested the robot at an actual museum. The results show that our robot increases visitors´ engagement and interaction with the guide, as well as interaction and engagement among visitors.