Children Playing With Robots Using Stigmergy On A Smart Floor

Reliable and safe interaction is essential when humans and robots move in close proximity. In this paper, we present a stigmergic approach where humans interact with robots via a smart floor. Stigmergy has been widely studied in robotic systems, however, HRI has thus far not availed itself of stigmergic solutions. We realize a stigmergic medium via RFID tags embedded in the floor, and use these to enable robot navigation, human tracking, as well as the interaction between robots and humans. The proposed method allows to employ robots with minimal sensing and computation capabilities. The approach relies only on the RFID sensors and the information stored in the tags, and no internal map is required for navigation. We design and implement a prototype game which involves a robot and a child moving together in a shared space. The prototype demonstrates that the approach is reliable and adheres to given safety constraints when human and robot are moving within close proximity of each other.