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The Interactive Museum Tour-Guide Robot
W. Burgard, A.B. Cremers, D. Fox, D. Hähnel, G. Lakemeyer, D. Schulz, W. Steiner, and S. Thrun
Proc. of the Fifteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-98), 1998.

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This paper describes the software architecture of an autonomous tour-guide/tutor robot. This robot was recently deployed in the ``Deutsches Museum Bonn,'' were it guided hundreds of visitors through the museum during a six-day deployment period. The robot's control software integrates low-level probabilistic reasoning with high-level problem solving embedded in first order logic. A collection of software innovations, described in this paper, enabled the robot to navigate at high speeds through dense crowds, while reliably avoiding collisions with obstacles---some of which could not even be sensed. Also described in this paper is a user interface tailored towards non-expert users, which we believe was essential for the robot's success in the museum. Based on these results, this paper argues that time is ripe for the development of AI-based commercial service robots that assist people in everyday life.

Note: Outstanding paper award

W. Burgard, A.B. Cremers, D. Fox, D. Hähnel, G. Lakemeyer, D. Schulz, W. Steiner, and S. Thrun, "The Interactive Museum Tour-Guide Robot," Proc. of the Fifteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-98), 1998.

@inproceedings{Burgard_1998_2661,
   author = "W. Burgard and A.B. Cremers and Dieter Fox and D. Hähnel and G. Lakemeyer and D. Schulz and W. Steiner and Sebastian Thrun",
   title = "The Interactive Museum Tour-Guide Robot",
   booktitle = "Proc. of the Fifteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-98)",
   year = "1998",
   note = "Outstanding paper award"
}