Development of a Socially Cognizant Robotic Campus Guide

A robotic system to help lost students find their way around a college campus was designed, built, and tested. Socially cognizant design practices, including stakeholder engagement, and interdisciplinary team-building, were practiced. Users can interact with the robot through speech or touchscreen interfaces. The robot can provide verbal instructions on reaching a destination, or can guide the user to the destination, navigating in a socially conscious way. The speech, person detection, and navigation modules perform well in isolation and in concert. Future work includes technical improvements to the person detection and navigation systems, and evaluating social acceptance.