Development Of Service Robots Research Articles

Artificial intelligence in restaurant businesses: a systematic review on service robots

PurposeWithin the scope of the research, articles about service robots were examined by the systematic review method.Design/methodology/approachThe research aims to evaluate the articles on service robots, an artificial intelligence (AI) application in restaurant businesses, using a systematic review method. In systematic reviews, the data obtained as a result of scanning databases to find an answer to a research question are synthesized and reported. The criterion sampling technique, one of the purposeful sampling methods, was used for the sample of the research. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied within the scope of screening.FindingsThe articles on service robots were carried out between 2018 and 2023. In terms of research methods, most of the articles are quantitative, while there are studies on mixed and qualitative methods. In studies, data were generally collected by survey technique. The keywords of the studies on service robots are examined; the most commonly used words were service robot and AI, technology, restaurant, satisfaction, revisit intention, consumer behavior, intention, preference, hospitality and foods. The objectives of the articles pertinent to service robots are mostly to determine people's attitudes and acceptance toward these services focuses.Originality/valueThe studies seem to focus more on customer acceptance, trust, expectations, risks, adaptation, reasons for preference, impact on creative services, emotional and cognitive effects and human–robot interaction. Despite this, it is observed that there are fewer studies on topics such as the development of service robots in restaurant businesses, their reflections on the future, future opportunities and the quality of chef service robots. Based on this, it is recommended to consider studies that will serve as a reference for revealing innovative opportunities that can meet future expectations in order to increase the quality of service robots in restaurant businesses.

Issues and Research Fields of Medical Robotics: A Review

The goal for collaborative robots has always driven advancements in robotic technology, especially in the manufacturing sector. However, this is not the case in service sectors, especially in the health sector. Thus, this lack of focus has now opened more room for the design and development of service robots that can be used in the health sector to help patients with ailments, cognitive problems, and disabilities. There is currently a global effort toward the development of new products and the use of robotic medical devices and computer-assisted systems. However, the major problem has been the lack of a thorough and systematic review of robotic research into disease and epidemiology, especially from a technology perspective. Also, medical robots are increasingly being used in healthcare to perform a variety of functions that improve patient care. This scoping review is aimed at discovering the types of robots used in healthcare and where they are deployed. Moreover, the current study is an overview of various forms of robotic technology and its uses in the healthcare industry. The considered technologies are the products of a partnership between the healthcare sector and academia. They demonstrate the research and testing that are necessary for the service of robot development before they can be employed in practical applications and service scenarios. The discussion also focused on the upcoming research areas in robotic systems as well as some important technologies necessary for human-robot collaboration, such as wireless sensor networks, big data, and artificial intelligence.

The Energy Efficiency Multi-Robot System and Disinfection Service Robot Development in Large-Scale Complex Environment.

In recent years, multi-robot control systems and service robots equipped with graphical computing have been introduced in various application scenarios. However, the long-term operation of VSLAM calculation leads to reduced energy efficiency of the robot, and accidental localization failure still persists in large-scale fields with dynamic crowds and obstacles. This study proposes an EnergyWise multi-robot system based on ROS that actively determines the activation of VSLAM using real-time fused localization poses by an innovative energy-saving selector algorithm. The service robot is equipped with multiple sensors and utilizes the novel 2-level EKF method and incorporates the UWB global localization mechanism to adapt to complex environments. During the COVID-19 pandemic, three disinfection service robots were deployed to disinfect a large, open, and complex experimental site for 10 days. The results demonstrated that the proposed EnergyWise multi-robot control system successfully achieved a 54% reduction in computing energy consumption during long-term operations while maintaining a localization accuracy of 3 cm.

사용 목적에 따른 서비스 로봇 인터랙션 디자인 사례 연구

Recently, the development of service robots that can assist or replace human work is accelerating by utilizing technological advances such as artificial intelligence and autonomous driving. Through this, the size of the global service robot market is increasing, and it is expected that the contact point between humans and robots will increase in real life according to these changes. Therefore, research on human-robot interaction (HRI) for smooth communication is a meaningful research topic.
 This study examined various interaction cases of foreign and domestic service robots. The human-likeness of the robot was derived as an evaluation factor, and the service robot was classified into functional and relational types according to the role of the robot, and it was analyzed by comparing the utilization of interaction feedback. As a result, relational service robots have higher utilization of interaction feedback in visual appearance, touch, movement, interaction behavior, and non-verbal communication than functional service robots. In the case of sound interaction, it was highly utilized regardless of relationship type and functional type, and the interaction between verbal communication and social behavior was highly utilized for functional service robots. Through this study, it is expected that a meaningful direction can be presented by helping to supplement and improve the interaction of many service robots to be developed in the future.

The Design and Development Status of Service Robots in Human-Aid Activities

The breakthrough in artificial intelligence technology and the decreased cost of core robot components have accelerated the perception of service robots in various fields. The application scenarios of service robots are complex and diverse, including retail, logistics, medical care, education, security, etc., to achieve diversified and complex functions. Artificial intelligence technology is an important determinant for service robots to achieve substantial progress in the next stage of development. Thus, in this paper, three typical types of service robots, including domestic service robots, outdoor service robots, and the service robot for the elderly and relevant technology advancements are introduced and discussed. It could be concluded that the development of more compatible materials and the controller and sensor technology can effectively improve the sensitivity of the robot and the ability to adapt to complex environments, thus improving the diversity of functions, the convenience of use, and accelerating the commercial application of robots. The paper provides constructive suggestions for the development of service robots in the future and hopes to accelerate the large-scale popularization of service robots.

Using User-Generated YouTube Videos to Understand Unguided Interactions with Robots in Public Places

Professional service robots are increasingly being deployed in public places, which thus increases user exposure. However, we lack an empirical understanding of complex encounters taking place in dynamic and often crowded environments as well as how people overcome breakdowns during unguided interaction with a robot in a real-world scenario. In this paper, we conducted a covert, digital ethnographic study analyzing 104 user-generated YouTube videos focusing on people’s unguided interactions with robots in several public places. We identified several types of interaction breakdowns pertaining to someone (person-initiated interaction breakdown, IB) or something (environmental disturbances, ED) having a direct, negative effect on an ongoing unguided interaction. Our findings have implications for the design and development of service robots facing multi-user scenarios entertaining active (primary and secondary) users, inactive (commentators and observers) ‘users’, and Incidentally Co-present Persons (InCoPs) . Furthermore, we contribute to and built on the limited prior use of YouTube videos and digital ethnography in HRI research, thereby demonstrating its effectiveness in studying unguided interactions in public places, while supplementing and adding to the existing knowledge base of service robots in public places.

What Affects the Acceptance and Use of Hotel Service Robots by Elderly Customers?

Against the realistic backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic and an aging population, emerging robot technology provides a new path for the development of high-quality hotel service. However, little is known about elderly customers’ acceptance and use of hotel service robots. This study explores factors that affect elderly customers’ acceptance and use of hotel service robots. From the perspective of perception and emotion, based on the technology acceptance model and quality service theory, a hotel service robot acceptance model was constructed for this study, and a structural equation model was used to analyze the data from 218 interviews. The results show that empathy, perceived value, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use directly affected the elderly customers’ intention to use robots. Perceived trust indirectly affected the use intention through perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. This study provided a theoretical basis for user behaviors regarding hotel service robots and provided guidance for the research and development of hotel service robots and the marketing promotion of hotel managers, which would promote the healthy development of service robots and related industries, such as the hotel service industry.

A method for service robot development based on a design structure matrix

ABSTRACT Although service robots that provide useful services to people are attracting attention, the majority of service robots do not reach the market. Various elements such as people to physical products are involved in the provision of services, and it is necessary to consider the interaction with each factor in the design. Furthermore, services are normally produced and consumed simultaneously; it is necessary to improve the robot even in the service provision phase. Modular design is an effective method for the continuous improvement of systems. However, few methods have considered robots and other service elements in an integrated manner. In this research, we propose a tool called the Service Robot Design Matrix (SRDM) to implement service robots design. SRDM represents the relationship among the elements of robots and service systems comprehensively. Additionally, the design structure matrix (DSM) is applied to modularize these elements to increase the ease of changing the service robot. Finally, SRDM is applied to an actual case of service robot design to validate its effectiveness. The designed service robot was developed by Team TAK and earned 2nd place in the Future Convenience Store Challenge (FCSC) at the World Robot Summit 2020 (WRS2020).

The perils of hotel technology: The robot usage resistance model

The COVID-19 outbreak has accelerated the development of service robots. However, service robots in some hotels have been put aside despite successful adoption. This study thus focuses on hotel employees' inhibited continuous usage intention by examining the challenges of benefiting from service robots. A robot usage resistance model (RURM) has been proposed based on the results. In this model, lack of authentic anthropomorphous features and low usability as technological characteristics could influence employees' cognitions toward service robots, while robot-related excessive workloads, techno-insecurity, and techno-uncertainty as psychological stimuli could trigger negative emotional arousal, which in turn fosters employee resistance to service robot continuous usage. This study offers a more solid conceptual investigation into employee resistance to service robot continuous usage, thus allowing the development of strategies to better reap the rewards of hotel service robot usage.

Non-Contact Service Robot Development in Fast-Food Restaurants

Given the prospect of low birth rate and aging population among developed countries, which further resulted in the shortage of workforces, service robots have been gradually applied to real-life from past academic research. This paper introduces the development of a service robot that is designed for food service in fast-food restaurants with the innovative improvement of mapping, localization, and navigation. Moreover, this research took the initiative of integrating 3D point cloud map and 2D occupancy grid map (OGM) in order to build a PC-OGM. In another word, using the sensory fusion method allows the service robot to adapt to a more complicated environment as well as enhance its positioning. In terms of its navigation function, the adaptive motion controller is refined so the service robot could navigate through narrow aisles smoothly. Finally, friendly contact-free food service robots were evaluated at fast-food restaurants in order to gain feedback from diners and waiters. Their feedback was broken down into 3 categories, availability, reliability, and satisfaction, for further analysis. As COVID-19 assails the world, we also look into future possibilities of food service robot deployment among restaurants to keep food and surface free from the virus.

Will you listen to a robot? Effects of robot ability, task complexity, and risk on human decision-making

With the rapid development of new technology, robots are increasingly being introduced into decision-making such that people can receive advice from them. Decision-making involves many variables, which should be investigated together. In the current study, we explored human-robot interaction in decision-making from the perspectives of confidence, trust, decision change, and reciprocity. We also investigated the effects of robot ability, task complexity, and risk on human-robot interaction in decision-making. We conducted an experiment where participants received advice from robots in a length judgment task, for which the participants had to select the longest line among eight lines. The results showed that participants had higher trust and confidence when receiving advice from high-ability robots. However, the participants had less confidence, reduced trust in the robots, a lower tendency to change their decision, and shared more losses with robots during complex tasks. They placed less trust in the robots and shared fewer benefits with them in a high-risk condition. Additionally, the participants’ self-construal was significantly correlated with trust and gender was significantly correlated with confidence, benefits shared with the robot, and decision change. These findings can aid researchers and designers in the development of service robots.

The State of Lifelong Learning in Service Robots:

Service robots are appearing more and more in our daily life. The development of service robots combines multiple fields of research, from object perception to object manipulation. The state-of-the-art continues to improve to make a proper coupling between object perception and manipulation. This coupling is necessary for service robots not only to perform various tasks in a reasonable amount of time but also to continually adapt to new environments and safely interact with non-expert human users. Nowadays, robots are able to recognize various objects, and quickly plan a collision-free trajectory to grasp a target object in predefined settings. Besides, in most of the cases, there is a reliance on large amounts of training data. Therefore, the knowledge of such robots is fixed after the training phase, and any changes in the environment require complicated, time-consuming, and expensive robot re-programming by human experts. Therefore, these approaches are still too rigid for real-life applications in unstructured environments, where a significant portion of the environment is unknown and cannot be directly sensed or controlled. In such environments, no matter how extensive the training data used for batch learning, a robot will always face new objects. Therefore, apart from batch learning, the robot should be able to continually learn about new object categories and grasp affordances from very few training examples on-site. Moreover, apart from robot self-learning, non-expert users could interactively guide the process of experience acquisition by teaching new concepts, or by correcting insufficient or erroneous concepts. In this way, the robot will constantly learn how to help humans in everyday tasks by gaining more and more experiences without the need for re-programming. In this paper, we review a set of previously published works and discuss advances in service robots from object perception to complex object manipulation and shed light on the current challenges and bottlenecks.

Software and control shell for service robots with parallel computing

KIAM Russian Academy of Sciences, International Laboratory «Sensorika» conduct research and development of service robots for tasks of telemedicine. The developed mobile robot AMUR-307 is planned to be used in clinics to move various objects between the premises of the building, separated by thresholds, stairs and doors. The robot is controlled remotely via a radio channel from the operator's post. It is also intended to minimize operator interference and apply the developed algorithms for autonomous operation using an on-board computing device. To control robots of this type, a software and hardware microprocessor system was designed and manufactured and its comprehensive testing was performed. The solution allows you quickly make changes to the customer's requirements and deliver robots, integrating them into the existing infrastructure. The article presents the results of research and comparison of various ways to implement the robot, optimize its structure, replication technology and parallel programming using the GPU.

Service Robots in the Healthcare Sector

Traditionally, advances in robotic technology have been in the manufacturing industry due to the need for collaborative robots. However, this is not the case in the service sectors, especially in the healthcare sector. The lack of emphasis put on the healthcare sector has led to new opportunities in developing service robots that aid patients with illnesses, cognition challenges and disabilities. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has acted as a catalyst for the development of service robots in the healthcare sector in an attempt to overcome the difficulties and hardships caused by this virus. The use of service robots are advantageous as they not only prevent the spread of infection, and reduce human error but they also allow front-line staff to reduce direct contact, focusing their attention on higher priority tasks and creating separation from direct exposure to infection. This paper presents a review of various types of robotic technologies and their uses in the healthcare sector. The reviewed technologies are a collaboration between academia and the healthcare industry, demonstrating the research and testing needed in the creation of service robots before they can be deployed in real-world applications and use cases. We focus on how robots can provide benefits to patients, healthcare workers, customers, and organisations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, we investigate the emerging focal issues of effective cleaning, logistics of patients and supplies, reduction of human errors, and remote monitoring of patients to increase system capacity, efficiency, resource equality in hospitals, and related healthcare environments.

Estimation of body direction based on gait for service robot applications

Recently, there have been several studies on the research and development of service robots, such as reception or waiter robots for facilities and companion robots for support of baggage transportation or guidance in public spaces. Several experimental results in real environments have been reported. To realize socially acceptable human–robot interaction for service robots, human recognition, including not only position but also body direction, around the robot is important. Using an RGB-D camera, it is possible to detect the posture of a person. However, because the viewing angle of the camera is narrow, it is difficult to recognize the environment around the robot with a single device. This study proposes the estimation of the body direction based on the gait, that is, not only the position and velocity, but also the state of the legs (stance or swing phase), using laser range sensors installed at shin height. We verify the effectiveness of the proposed method for several patterns of movement, which are seen when a person interacts with the service robot and evaluate measurement accuracy.

Automatic robotic recharging systems – development and challenges

Purpose Since the market penetrations of service robots are only successful to a limited types of services, the purpose of the paper is to look into the reasons why the market penetrations are lagged from both technical and nontechnical perspectives. Automatic robotic recharging services, especially robotic refueling systems, are used as the case study for the investigation. Design/methodology/approach This paper surveyed the relevant technologies and products and conducted the feasibility study and risk management for new development of automated robotic refueling systems. This paper developed a cost model for the evaluation of robotic refueling systems. Findings There are no major technical barriers that exist for the development of robotic refueling systems, but two main risks of developing new robotic refueling systems are interference of existing patents and the extreme effort to further reduce the development cost of automated refueling systems. The recommendations have been made to new developers of service robots. Research limitations/implications The suggestions are made for further development on service robots, in general; however, this paper does not cover the physical development of service robots. Practical implications This study was actually conducted for a client company who has a strong interest in developing new products for automatic robotic refueling systems. The reported work has great significance for new comers in this area to understand the state of the art, technological challenges and some potential risks in the field. Originality/value To the best of authors’ knowledge, it will be the first academic paper to summarize the research and development effort on automatic recharging business. The targeted field is very typical in promoting robots in services. Even robotic refueling was proposed at very early stage of robotic application, the market penetration of refueling robots the market penetration is very limited, not because the technology readiness but some other factors. This work has its significance to identify technical and nontechnical challenges to promote robots in services.

Developing Context-Aware Dialoguing Services for a Cloud-Based Robotic System

In the development of service robots, building dialoguing services for robots to provide natural human-robot interactions and enhancing user experiences is now advocated. In this type of service, a robot can play the role of a knowledgeable consultant and deliver domain-specific knowledge to end users. Following our previous studies in constructing action-oriented robot services, in this paper, we adopt a service-oriented framework to develop a context-aware dialoguing service for a cloud robot. Our work has several unique features: it trains a deep neural model to generate answers in response to the users' questions, utilizes an external knowledge resource to further enrich knowledge for searching for answers, constructs a reasoning procedure to exploit the answers of similar questions, and most importantly, and develops an integrated approach that embeds both contextual information and dialoguing content in the same model. To evaluate the proposed approach, we conducted a series of experiments and implemented several strategies for performance comparison. The results confirmed the usefulness and effectiveness of the integrated context and content approach.

Development of Educational Service Robot and Practical Training

As robot workshops for elementary and junior-high school students are being held across Japan, there is a large variety of teaching-material robots available for them. An increasing number of freshmen at colleges or universities already undertake some basic education on robotics before they enter a college or a university. On the other hand, as research and development of service robots is being promoted as a part of the measures to cope with the declining birthrate and the aging population of Japan, service robots are expected to come into much wider use. Under these circumstances, it is imperative for universities and technical colleges to enrich the contents of their robotics education, especially on service robots. However, there are no robots available as teaching materials. Therefore, we developed an educational service robot and used it to conduct practical trainings with the aim of motivating students to develop robots, as well as enhancing their motivations. This paper reports on the details of this project.

Advanced composite alloys for constructional parts of robots

In recent years all over the world special attention has been paid to the development and implementation of nanostructured materials possessing unique properties and opening fascinating prospects for the development of technical progress in various fields of human activities. A special place can be given to the development of service robots, the market of which is actively developing. There is problem associated mainly with the lack of heat-strengthened alloys which consists in low thermal stability of the alloy properties under the conditions of elevated variable temperatures and loads. The article presents studies to assess the effect of composition, the amounts of refractory nanoscale particles and methods for their introduction into the melt on the structure and properties in nanostructured composite aluminum alloys. The powders of metals, alloys, as well as silicon carbide and aluminum oxide were used to produce the nanostructured powder composite materials. As a result of the research, NPCM compositions containing micro-size particles of transition metals that are carriers of nanosized reinforcing particles and initiators of the formation of an intermetallide of endogenous origin in a melt.

Research and development of service robots by competition activities

Research and development of service robots by competition activities