Nadine the Social Robot: Three Case Studies in Everyday Life

This paper describes three case studies performed in everyday life with our social humanoid robot, Nadine. The development of AI, vision, and NLP over the last few years has made it possible to improve social robots’ awareness ability of their environment and has enabled them to understand spoken interactions. We have developed a software platform with several modules that allow us to introduce Nadine to real-life settings. We have brought Nadine to three different places in real-life setting. The first one was to prepare Nadine for an exhibition at the Artscience Museum in Singapore. The second one was to let Nadine work as a customer agent in AIA insurance company along with real employees. The third one, very recent, was to use Nadine as a companion in a elderly home. In this paper, we describe the three case studies we performed in different environments and the lessons we have learned from the outcomes of those experiences. We conclude by proposing new research avenues and the missing pieces that could make these social robots available to us in our everyday life.