TOOMAS: Interactive Shopping Guide robots in everyday use - final implementation and experiences from long-term field trials

TLDR

The study presents the development of interactive mobile shopping companion robots designed for everyday use in challenging environments such as home improvement stores, and investigates their autonomous operation and customer acceptance. The authors conducted long‑term field trials starting in April 2008, deploying nine robots that collectively covered 2,187 km across three German stores while evaluating requirements, environmental challenges, and system functionality. The trials guided over 8,600 customers to their desired products, demonstrating successful autonomous navigation and marking a significant advance toward assistive robotics for daily use.

Abstract

The paper gives a comprehensive overview of our Shopping Guide project, which aims at the development of interactive mobile shopping companion robots for everyday use in challenging operating environments such as home improvement stores. It is spanning an arc from the expectations and requirements of store owners and customers, via the challenges of the shopping scenario and the operating environment, the implemented functionality of the shopping guide robots, up to the results of long-term field trials. The field trials started in April 2008 and still ongoing aim at studying whether and how a group of interactive mobile shopping guide robots can operate completely autonomously in such everyday environments and how they are accepted by uninstructed customers. In these field trials, where nine robotic shopping guides traveled together 2187 kilometers in three different home improvement stores in Germany, more than 8,600 customers were successfully guided to the locations of their products of choice. With the successful development of these shopping guide robots, a further important step towards assistive robotics for daily use has been done.