MIVIABot: A Cognitive Robot for Smart Museum

Abstract

Cognitive robots are robots provided with artificial intelligence capabilities, able to properly interact with people and with the objects in an a priori unknown environment, using advanced artificial intelligence algorithms. For instance, a humanoid robot can be perceived as a plausible tourist guide in a museum. Within this context, in this work we present how the latest findings in the field of machine learning and pattern recognition can be applied to equip a robot with sufficiently advanced perception capabilities in order to successfully guide visitors through the halls and the attraction in a museum. The challenge of running all those algorithms on a mobile, embedded platform in real time is tackled on an architectural level, where all the artificial intelligence features are tuned to run with a low computational burden and a Neural Network accelerator is included in the hardware setup. Improved robustness and predictable latency is obtained avoiding the use of cloud services in the system. Our robot, that we call MIVIABot, is able to decode and understand speech as well as extract soft biometrics from its interlocutor such as age, gender and emotional status. The robot can integrate all those elements in a dialog, using basic Natural Language Processing capabilities.