Do you remember that shop? — Computational model of spatial memory for shopping companion robots

We aim to develop a shopping companion robot that can share experience with users. In this study, we focused on the shared memory acquired when a robot walks together with a user. We developed a computational model of memory recall of visited locations in a shopping mall. The model was developed with data collection from 30 participants. We found that shop size, color intensity of facade, relative visibility, and time elapsed are the influencing features for recall. The model was used in a scenario of a shopping companion robot. The robot, Robovie, autonomously follows a user while inferring the user´s memory recall of shops in the visited route. When the user asks the location of other shops, Robovie replied with destination description, referring to the known locations inferred with the model of the user´s memory recall. With this scenario, we verified the effectiveness of the developed computational model of memory recall. The evaluation experiment revealed that the model outputs shops that the participants are likely to recall, and makes the directions given easier to understand.