Situation-based Robot Design

The purpose of this study is to consider the method of situation-based design for the personal robot. We designed an original program for the personal robot and took it to a nursery school. Through situation-base activity with the robot in this community, we heve been able to design the personal robot with the user beyond designer’s imagination. 1. User’s Situtated Actions Lucy A.Suchman had mentioned that “a plan” is not given but producted in situated actions. In a similar way, an user uses artifact in situated actions. We notice the user’s situated actions and consider about the methodology of the robot design. 2. Partner-type Personal Robot We design the performance of the robot with Partner-type Personal Robot PaPeRo developed by NEC Corporation. We use PaPeRo as a tool of our research. the development environment of the robot makes it easy to develop the robot 's action. We use the development environment to develop original software for the robot. Fig. 1 Partner-type Personal Robot PaPeRo . 3. Use of the robot and fieldwork at a nursery school We designed an original program for the robot and took it to a nursery school in Tokyo. We incorporated the opinions of children, parents and teachers to the robot's software. Experimental period lasted from October 1995 to December 1995 and October 1996 to December 1996. We remote-controlled the robot using PDA. There is a commonly used method for robot design that verify the performance of a robot as assumed by designer. But we used the robot in user's activity at the nursery school and observed it and evaluated what action of the robot to design situation by situation as follows. Example 1 The robot said “morning!” We remotecontrolled the robot and the robot said "morning!" to children at an entrance of the nursery school in the morning. We made the robot say something new because the children clustered around the robot and continued to stay at the entrance and did not enter classroom. the robot said "Let’s play together after changing clothes at the class room!" by remote control. Fig.2 the robot at the entrance of the nursery school in the morning. But some of children came back after changing clothes to the entrance. Eventually, we moved the robot to the classroom after greeting them briefly. Example 2 The robot was being picked on One day the robot was surrounded by the children and it appeared that the our robot was being picked on. We inputted new expression "Stop it!" into PDA device and the robot said it. The director of the nursery school told us that children were not picking on the robot. But and they were only playing with the robot which was at their disposed. Hearing her comment, we could see that the children were not bullying the our robot but were simply playing in all innocence. After the incident, the teachers of the nursery school told the children to treat the robot gently. Fig.3 The children clustered around the robot. Example 3 The robot read a book to the children One day the children asked us to read the picture book by the robot. The picture book was their favorite. We programmed the contents of reading text of the book to the robot. When we executed the contents of book reading for the children, the children surround the robot and listened to the reading by the robot. One of the children turned over pages of the book. The teacher of the nursery school usually read a book and turn over pages for the children. the child rolled “teacher” and another children rolled “ listeners”. The child copied the action of the teacher. After all, we producted new activity of the children by the contents of book reading in the nursery school. 4. Situation-based robot design We observed the robot user’s action and designed the action of the robot. The new action of the robot caused the new activity of the user. From the new activity of the user,We designed the more new action of the robot...... The interaction between the robot and people at the nursery school was caused situation by situation and beyond the reach of designer's imagination. The design of the robot changed the user’s activity and the user’s activity changed the design of the robot to the contray. The change of the robot and the user repeatedly in our field work of the nursery school. In this situation, the robot designer can not design the robot from his own motive completely. At the same time our idea to the user changed bit by bit . In my opinion, a robot designer should not look on a user of a robot as “a test subject” and have a preconceived idea to an activity of an user. We should define "robot design " as design which include not only ideas of designer but also an unintended idea. By participating in the user community and designing robots through user's activity, situation by situation, the view point of designer will better fit the user. The personal robot was designed by collaboration between the robot designer and the user in situated actions. Fig.4 The robot read a picture book for the children.