Intuitive multimodal interaction for service robots

Matthias Nieuwenhuisen, Jörg Stückler, Sven Behnke

Abstract: Domestic service tasks require three main skills from autonomous robots: robust navigation in indoor environments, flexible object manipulation, and intuitive communication with the users. In this report, we present the communication skills of our anthropomorphic service and communication robots Dynamaid and Robotinho. Both robots are equipped with an intuitive multimodal communication system, including speech synthesis and recognition, gestures and mimic. We evaluate our systems in the @Home league of the RoboCup competitions and in a museum tour guide scenario.