The Museum Tourguide Project: Experiences with a Deployed Service Robot
The field of robotics is currently undergoing a major change. In the next decade, we will witness the deployment of a rapidly increasing number of service robots, i.e., robots that will directly provide assistance to people in their daily activities. The new application domains pose new challenges for the field of robotics. There is a need for more flexible and robust methods for robot control, along with more natural interactive user interfaces. This talk describes RHINO, a mobile robot that has recently been deployed at the “Deutsches Museum” as an interactive tourguide. RHINO interacts with and provides guided tours to visitors of the museum. Remote users can also monitor and control RHINO’s operation through a Webbased multi-modal interface. This talk will discuss RHINO’s software architecture, which integrates various modules for high-speed navigation, map learning, and user interaction. Empirical results will also be presented, along with lessons that were learned when deploying the robot in the museum. The work has been carried out jointly with W. Burgard, D. Fox, D. Haehnel, D. Schulz, and W. Steiner from the University of Bonn. O-8186-8138-1/97 $10.00