Challenges of a Real-World HRI Study with Non-Native English Speakers

Abstract

Real-world studies allow for testing the limits of HRI systems and observing how people react to failures. We developed a fully autonomous personalised barista robot and deployed the robot on an international student campus for five days. We experienced several challenges, the most important one being speech recognition failures due to foreign accents. Nonetheless, these failures showed a different perspective on HRI, and we demonstrate how personalisation can overcome a negative user experience.