Demonstrating the Humanoid Robot HERMES at an Exhibition: A Long-Term Dependability Test

HERMES, a laboratory prototype of a humanoid service robot, served in a museum, far away from its home laboratory, for more than six months up to 18 hours per day. During this period the robot and its skills were regularly demonstrated to the public by non-expert presenters. Also, HERMES interacted with the visitors, chatted with them in English, French and German, answered questions and performed services as requested by them. Only three major failures occurred during the 6-months-period, all of them caused by failures of commercially available modules that could easily be replaced. Key to this success was the dependability that had been designed into HERMES. We introduce the concept of dependability and describe the design strategies that have led to a high degree of dependability of our robot. To be accepted by society and to be entrusted with important or even critical services, future service robots must be similarly dependable as today’s cars or telephones. We argue that true dependability of complex intelligent robots can only be achieved by actually building and integrating prototypes and subjecting them to long-term tests with outsiders and away from their home laboratories. In fact, by demonstrating HERMES in the museum, at trade fairs and in TV studios we have learned valuable lessons, especially regarding the interaction of a complex service robot with unknown humans.