Listening to vs overhearing robots in a hotel public space

This report presents preliminary work performed using robots with different socially interactive functionalities in a hotel public space in order to investigate human-robot interactions (HRI). We developed robots that enable the following types of interactions: (i) indirect interaction, where twin robots (Gemini), with body-movement and conversational ability, engage in a conversation and guests can gather information through overhearing the robots, and (ii) direct interaction, where a smaller-sized robot (Palro), that can detect the presence of guests, greets them directly. In both cases, guest-behavior is studied using four categories that define the levels of a guest's response toward the robots. Several significant differences among the levels of attention paid by the guests to the robots are observed in the experiments.