Shutter, the Robot Photographer: Leveraging Behavior Trees for Public, In-the-Wild Human-Robot Interactions

TL;DR

This paper presents Shutter, a robot photographer platform that uses behavior trees to enhance adaptability, reactivity, and reusability in public human-robot interactions in uncontrolled environments.

Contribution

It introduces a behavior tree-based architecture for public robots, emphasizing reusability and reactivity in real-world, in-the-wild settings.

Findings

Behavior trees improve reactivity in group interactions

Architecture choice impacts behavior reusability

Reusable platform facilitates future public HRI research

Abstract

Deploying interactive systems in-the-wild requires adaptability to situations not encountered in lab environments. Our work details our experience about the impact of architecture choice on behavior reusability and reactivity while deploying a public interactive system. In particular, we introduce Shutter, a robot photographer and a platform for public interaction. In designing Shutter's architecture, we focused on adaptability for in-the-wild deployment, while developing a reusable platform to facilitate future research in public human-robot interaction. We find that behavior trees allow reactivity, especially in group settings, and encourage designing reusable behaviors.