A mobile social bar table based on a retired security robot

Abstract

The design of a social robot that serves refreshments to party guests is presented. The robot has the physical form of a bar table on wheels. It has a simple three-state behavior: if it detects drinks and refreshments on its tabletop then it wanders the room in search of people by means of a simple phonotaxis approach. If the drinks and refreshments have been removed then it returns to a designated corner of the room for reloading. The robot serves as an interesting research platform for human-robot interaction. The design is based on a retired security robot that was popular in the 1990s. Its omnidirectional synchro-drive base serves the current design well as it can easily maneuver around people. The entire design and implementation occurred over approximately two months. The design process, implementation and preliminary test results are presented.