How to move towards visitors: A model for museum guide robots to initiate conversation

Museum guide robots should observe visitors in order to identify those who may desire a guide, and then initiate conversation with them. This paper presents a model for such robot behavior. Initiation of conversation is an important concern for social service robots such as museum guide robots. When people enter into a social interaction, they tend to situate themselves in a spatial-orientational arrangement such that each is facing inward around a space to which each has immediate access. When this kind of particular spatial formation occurs, they can feel that they are participating in the conversation; once they perceive their participation, they will subsequently try to maintain this spatial formation. We developed a model that describes the constraints and expected behaviors in initiation of conversation. Experimental results demonstrate that our model significantly improves a robot's performance in initiating conversation.