Exploring human-robot interaction through telepresence board games

This paper presents an experimental test bed for exploring and evaluating human-robot interaction (HRI). Our system is designed around the concept of playing board games involving collaboration between humans and robots in a shared physical environment. Unlike the classic human-versus-machine situation often established in computer-based board games, our test bed takes advantage of the rich interaction opportunities that arise when humans and robots play collaboratively as a team. To facilitate interaction within a shared physical environment, our game is played on a large checkerboard where human and robotic players can be situated and play as game pieces. With meaningful interaction occurring within this controlled setup, various aspects of human-robot interaction can be easily explored and evaluated such as interaction methods and robot behaviour. In this paper we present our test bed which uses a telepresence interface for playing the game and the results of a user study demonstrating the sensitivity of our system in assessing the effect of different robot behaviours on users.