Social robots in smart public environments

Robotic technology is gradually entering our everyday environments and it is expected that in future social robots will be used to provide various services to users of public spaces. However, robots nowadays still lack the abilities to sense and understand their surroundings, and even more importantly, they lack the knowledge on the persons' usual behavior in public spaces. This talk will discuss how we use ambient sensors to overcome the difficulties of introducing robots in populated spaces and to improve our understanding on the persons' behavior, as well as give an overview of our group's research on human-robot interaction in public environments.