• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.787-797
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• 2023

The use of service robots, particularly guide robots, is becoming increasingly prevalent in public institutions. However, there has been limited research into the interactions between users and guide robots. To explore the customer experience with the guidance robot, we selected 'QI', which has been meeting customers for the longest time, and collected all reviews since the service was launched in public institutions. By using text mining techniques, we identified the main keywords and user experience factors and examined factors that hinder user experience. As a result, the guide robot's functionality, appearance, interaction methods, and role as a cultural commentator and helper were key factors that influenced the user experience. After identifying hindrance factors, we suggested solutions such as improved interaction design, multimodal interface service design, and content development. This study contributes to the understanding of user experience with guide robots and provides practical suggestions for improvement.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.289-295
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• 2012

In recent years, an increased amount of research has been carried out on mobile robots to improve the performance of service robots. Mobile robots maximize the mobility of service robots, thus allowing them to work in different areas. However, conventional service robots have their center of mass placed high above the ground, which may cause them to fall when moving at high speed. Furthermore, hub-type actuators, which are often used for mobile robots, are large and expensive. In this study, we propose a mobile robot with a hub-type actuator unit and a variable footprint mechanism. The proposed variable footprint mechanism greatly improves the stability and mobility of the robot, allowing it to move freely in a narrow space and carry out various tasks. The performance of the proposed robot is verified experimentally.

• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.1-10
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• 2020

Service robots providing services according to user's needs in dynamically changing environments should be able to utilize external services such as cloud services. Cloud services are, however, changing and expanding continuously and thus the interface to the services must be general and flexible to adapt to the changes of the functionality and data of the services. In order to facilitate the adaptation of the interface to the changes, a model-based general interface to various cloud services is proposed. In this approach, a general and extensible interface is realized by defining standard service profiles that can be easily extended to adapt to the changed services. Experiments with intelligent service robots show satisfying results exhibiting flexible adaptations to new or changed external services.

• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.34 no.8
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• pp.731-742
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• 2007

Self-growing software is a software system that has the capability of evolving its functionalities and configurations by itself based on dynamically monitored situations. Self-growing software is especially necessary for intelligent service robots, which must have the capability to monitor their surrounding environments and provide appropriate behaviors for human users. However, it is hard to anticipate all situations that robots face with, and it is hard to make robots have all functionalities for various environments. In addition, robots have limited internal capacity. To support self-growing software for intelligent service robots, we are developing a cell-based distributed repository system that allows robots and developers transparently to share robot functionalities. To accomplish the creation of evolutionary repositories, we invented the concept of a cell, which is a logical group of distributed repositories based upon the functionalities of components. In addition, a cell can be used as a unit for the evolutionary growth of the components within the repositories. In this paper, we describe the requirements and architecture of the cell-based repository system for self-growing software. We also present a prototype implementation and experiment of the repository system. Through the cell-based repositories, we achieve improved performance of self-growing actions for robots and efficient sharing of components among robots and developers.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.26 no.12
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• pp.247-254
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• 2021

As COVID-19 spread, non-face-to-face activities were required, and the use of service robots is gradually increasing. This paper analyzed the relationship between the increasing trend of service robots before and after COVID-19 through keyword search containing the keyword 'service robot AND non-face-to-face' over the past three years (2018.10-20219) using BigKines, a news big data analysis system. As a result, there were 0 cases in the first period (2018.10~2019.9), 52 cases in the second period (2019.10~2020.9) and 112 cases in the third period (2020.10~2021.9), an increase of 115% compared to the second period. The keywords commonly mentioned in the analysis of related words in the second and third periods were COVID-19, AI, the Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy, and LG Electronics, and the weight of COVID-19 was the largest, confirming that the analysis keyword. Due to the spread of Corona 19, non-face-to-face is required, and with the development of information and communication technology, the field of application of service robots is rapidly increasing. Accordingly, for the commercialization of service robots that will lead the non-face-to-face economy, there is an urgent need to nurture human resources that require standardization and expertise in safety and performance fields.

• Proceedings of the Korea Society of Design Studies Conference
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.36-37
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• 2005

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers D
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• v.54 no.5
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• pp.300-306
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• 2005

In this paper we present a guideline to evaluate how easy the use of personal robots is and how good their learning abilities are, based on the analysis of their built-in commands, user interfaces, and intelligences. Recently, we are living with robots that can be able to do lots of roles; cleaning, security, pets and education in real life. They can be classified as home robots, guide robots, service robots, robot pets, and so on. There we, however, no standards to evaluate their abilities, so it is not easy to select an appropriate robot when a user wants to buy it. Thus, we present, as a guideline that can be a standard for the evaluation of the personal robots, the standards by means of analyzing existing personal robots and results of the recent research works. We will, also, demonstrate how to apply the evaluation method to the cleaning robot as an example.

• Design Convergence Study
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.153-167
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• 2017

Nowadays, as many robots are developed for desktop, users interact with the robots based on speech. However, due to technical limitations related to speech-based interaction, an alternative is needed. We designed this research to design a robot that interacts with the user by using unconditional reflection of biological signals. In order to apply bio-signals to robots more effectively, we evaluated the robots' overall service evaluation, perceived intelligence, appropriateness, trustworthy, and sociability according to the degree of the robot's embodiment level and the response speed of the robot. The result showed that in terms of intelligence and appropriateness, 3D robot with higher embodiment level was more positively evaluated than 2D robot with lower embodiment level. Also, the robot with faster response rate was evaluated more favorably in overall service evaluation, intelligence, appropriateness, trustworthy, and sociability than the robot with slower response rate. In addition, in service evaluation, trustworthy, and sociability, there were interaction effects according to the robot's embodiment level and the response speed.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.189-198
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• 2006

This study assumed that the best road guidance system for the vision impaired is a robot and analyzed and verified the requirements of road guidance system. In order to do so, the characteristics and inconveniences of the vision impaired as passengers and pedestrians were examined and their reactions to warnings and dangerous situations were analyzed. Users' needs and robots' functional requirements were applied to analyze the requirements of road guidance system. To verify whether the proposed requirements would be applied to robots effectively, a service scenario was used.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.216-224
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• 2023

Guide robots that provide services in public places have recently emerged as a non-face-to-face solution with the spread of COVID-19 and are growing. However, most guide robots provide only the same level of intelligence and the same interaction in different and changing environments. Therefore, its usefulness is limited and customers' interest is quickly lost. To solve this problem, it is necessary to develop social intelligence that can improve the robot's environment and situational awareness performance, and to continuously maintain customer interest by providing personalized and situational services. In this study, we developed guide robot services based on social HRI components that provides multi-modal context-aware. We evaluated service usefulness by measuring user satisfaction and frequency of use of the service through the survey. We analyzed the service quality attributes to identify the differentiating factors of guide robot based on social HRI components.