Short Duration Robot Interaction at an Airport: Challenges from a Socio-Psychological Point of View

This extended abstract concerns the FP7-project Spencer. As part of the Spencer project, a demonstrator robot will be developed which provide services to passengers at a major European airport. Example services include (1) guiding transfer passengers from their arrival gate to the so-called Schengen barrier, and (2) assisting in the transfer process by printing boarding passes. The goal of the robot is to make sure that passengers will make their connecting flight, with our own focus being on the human-robot interaction. In the following, we describe a sample use case of the project scenario. Based on this we identify possible challenges that are of interest with respect to interactive robots in public spaces.