Rietz Finn, Sutherland Alexander, Bensch Suna, Wermter Stefan, Hellström Thomas
Department of Informatics, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany.
Department of Computing Science, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden.
Front Robot AI. 2021 Jul 14;8:668057. doi: 10.3389/frobt.2021.668057. eCollection 2021.
Wizard-of-Oz experiments play a vital role in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), as they allow for quick and simple hypothesis testing. Still, a publicly available general tool to conduct such experiments is currently not available in the research community, and researchers often develop and implement their own tools, customized for each individual experiment. Besides being inefficient in terms of programming efforts, this also makes it harder for non-technical researchers to conduct Wizard-of-Oz experiments. In this paper, we present a general and easy-to-use tool for the Pepper robot, one of the most commonly used robots in this context. While we provide the concrete interface for Pepper robots only, the system architecture is independent of the type of robot and can be adapted for other robots. A configuration file, which saves experiment-specific parameters, enables a quick setup for reproducible and repeatable Wizard-of-Oz experiments. A central server provides a graphical interface a browser while handling the mapping of user input to actions on the robot. In our interface, keyboard shortcuts may be assigned to phrases, gestures, and composite behaviors to simplify and speed up control of the robot. The interface is lightweight and independent of the operating system. Our initial tests confirm that the system is functional, flexible, and easy to use. The interface, including source code, is made commonly available, and we hope that it will be useful for researchers with any background who want to conduct HRI experiments.
奥兹国魔法师实验在人机交互（HRI）中起着至关重要的作用，因为它们能够实现快速且简单的假设检验。然而，目前研究界还没有一个公开可用的通用工具来进行此类实验，研究人员通常会针对每个单独的实验开发并实现自己的工具。这不仅在编程工作方面效率低下，对于非技术研究人员来说，进行奥兹国魔法师实验也变得更加困难。在本文中，我们为Pepper机器人（在此背景下最常用的机器人之一）提供了一个通用且易于使用的工具。虽然我们仅为Pepper机器人提供了具体的接口，但系统架构独立于机器人类型，可适用于其他机器人。一个保存特定实验参数的配置文件，能够实现快速设置，以进行可重复且可再现的奥兹国魔法师实验。一个中央服务器提供了一个图形界面（通过浏览器），同时处理用户输入到机器人动作的映射。在我们的界面中，可以为短语、手势和复合行为分配键盘快捷键，以简化并加快对机器人的控制。该界面轻量级且独立于操作系统。我们的初步测试证实该系统功能齐全、灵活且易于使用。该界面（包括源代码）已公开提供，我们希望它对任何背景的想要进行人机交互实验的研究人员都有用。
