Teaching a mobile robot to take elevators

Abstract

Interaction between the user and a robot is useful for an efficient and easy teaching of task knowledge. Without interaction, the user has to think about what to teach to the robot. This is difficult for the user partly because he/she does not have enough knowledge of the robot's ability and partly because the user's knowledge may not be well-structured. The ability of moving between floors by using elevators is indispensable for mobile robots operating in office environments to expand their work areas. This chapter describes a method of interactively teaching the task of taking elevators for making it easier for the user to use such robots for various elevators. The necessary knowledge of the task is organized as the task model. The robot examines the task model and determines what are missing in the model, and then asks the user to teach them. This enables the user to teach the necessary knowledge easily and efficiently. Experimental results show the potential usefulness of the approach. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.