• Journal of Service Research and Studies
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.41-61
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• 2023

The universal form of life in the era of the 4th industrial revolution can probably be summarized as the keyword "non-face-to-face". In particular, in terms of consumption activities, face-to-face contact is gradually changing to a system that minimizes, and offline stores are rapidly changing to non-contact services through kiosks and robots. The social structure is also changing with the passage of time, and most fundamentally, our dietary consumption patterns are changing. In particular, the increase in single-person households and the aging population are having a great impact on changes in the food service industry, which is closely related to dietary life. The HMR (Home Meal Replacement) market has grown significantly as the labor of cooking at home has decreased and the use of substitute foods has increased. As the size of the market has grown, the types of businesses that provide products have also diversified. The development of technology, non-face-to-face culture, and corporate management efficiency are intertwined, and unmanned stores are spreading recently. In this study, service quality attributes of HMR unmanned stores, where competition is gradually intensifying, are classified, and service quality classification using the Kano model and Timko's customer satisfaction coefficient are calculated to provide implications for service management based on customer satisfaction. As a result of the analysis, 'products with short cooking time' and 'variety of products (menu)' were classified as attractive qualities, and 'cleanliness inside/outside of the store' and 'products at reasonable prices' were classified as unified quality. In addition, 'convenience of self-checkout process' was classified as a natural quality, and 'convenience of in-store passage' was classified as an indifferent quality. Furthermore, when the service factor was satisfied within the HMR unmanned store, the factor with the highest satisfaction coefficient was 'product (menu) variety', and the factor with the highest dissatisfaction factor was 'convenience of self-checkout process'. Through the results of this study, it is intended to derive priorities in service quality management of HMR unmanned stores and provide strategic implications for related businesses.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.53-69
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• 2011

Vision and voice-based technologies are commonly utilized for human-robot interaction. But it is widely recognized that the performance of vision and voice-based interaction systems is deteriorated by a large margin in the real-world situations due to environmental and user variances. Human users need to be very cooperative to get reasonable performance, which significantly limits the usability of the vision and voice-based human-robot interaction technologies. As a result, touch screens are still the major medium of human-robot interaction for the real-world applications. To empower the usability of robots for various services, alternative interaction technologies should be developed to complement the problems of vision and voice-based technologies. In this paper, we propose the use of accelerometer-based gesture interface as one of the alternative technologies, because accelerometers are effective in detecting the movements of human body, while their performance is not limited by environmental contexts such as lighting conditions or camera's field-of-view. Moreover, accelerometers are widely available nowadays in many mobile devices. We tackle the problem of classifying acceleration signal patterns of 26 English alphabets, which is one of the essential repertoires for the realization of education services based on robots. Recognizing 26 English handwriting patterns based on accelerometers is a very difficult task to take over because of its large scale of pattern classes and the complexity of each pattern. The most difficult problem that has been undertaken which is similar to our problem was recognizing acceleration signal patterns of 10 handwritten digits. Most previous studies dealt with pattern sets of 8~10 simple and easily distinguishable gestures that are useful for controlling home appliances, computer applications, robots etc. Good features are essential for the success of pattern recognition. To promote the discriminative power upon complex English alphabet patterns, we extracted 'motion trajectories' out of input acceleration signal and used them as the main feature. Investigative experiments showed that classifiers based on trajectory performed 3%~5% better than those with raw features e.g. acceleration signal itself or statistical figures. To minimize the distortion of trajectories, we applied a simple but effective set of smoothing filters and band-pass filters. It is well known that acceleration patterns for the same gesture is very different among different performers. To tackle the problem, online incremental learning is applied for our system to make it adaptive to the users' distinctive motion properties. Our system is based on instance-based learning (IBL) where each training sample is memorized as a reference pattern. Brute-force incremental learning in IBL continuously accumulates reference patterns, which is a problem because it not only slows down the classification but also downgrades the recall performance. Regarding the latter phenomenon, we observed a tendency that as the number of reference patterns grows, some reference patterns contribute more to the false positive classification. Thus, we devised an algorithm for optimizing the reference pattern set based on the positive and negative contribution of each reference pattern. The algorithm is performed periodically to remove reference patterns that have a very low positive contribution or a high negative contribution. Experiments were performed on 6500 gesture patterns collected from 50 adults of 30~50 years old. Each alphabet was performed 5 times per participant using $Nintendo{(R)}$ $Wii^{TM}$ remote. Acceleration signal was sampled in 100hz on 3 axes. Mean recall rate for all the alphabets was 95.48%. Some alphabets recorded very low recall rate and exhibited very high pairwise confusion rate. Major confusion pairs are D(88%) and P(74%), I(81%) and U(75%), N(88%) and W(100%). Though W was recalled perfectly, it contributed much to the false positive classification of N. By comparison with major previous results from VTT (96% for 8 control gestures), CMU (97% for 10 control gestures) and Samsung Electronics(97% for 10 digits and a control gesture), we could find that the performance of our system is superior regarding the number of pattern classes and the complexity of patterns. Using our gesture interaction system, we conducted 2 case studies of robot-based edutainment services. The services were implemented on various robot platforms and mobile devices including $iPhone^{TM}$. The participating children exhibited improved concentration and active reaction on the service with our gesture interface. To prove the effectiveness of our gesture interface, a test was taken by the children after experiencing an English teaching service. The test result showed that those who played with the gesture interface-based robot content marked 10% better score than those with conventional teaching. We conclude that the accelerometer-based gesture interface is a promising technology for flourishing real-world robot-based services and content by complementing the limits of today's conventional interfaces e.g. touch screen, vision and voice.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.512-516
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• 2004

Context-aware computing has been attracting the attention as an approach to alleviating the inconvenience in human-computer interaction. This paper proposes a context-aware system architecture to be implemented on an SoC(System-on-a-Chip). The proposed architecture supports sensor abstraction, notification mechanism for context changes, modular development, easy service composition using if-then rules, and flexible context-aware service implementation. It consists of the communication unit, the processing unit, the blackboard, and the rule-based system unit, where the first three components reside in the microprocessor part of the SoC and the rule-based system unit is implemented in hardware. For the proposed architecture, an SoC system has been designed and tested in an SoC development platform called SystemC and the feasibility of the behavoir modules for the microprocessor part has been evaluated by implementing software modules on the conventional computer platform. This SoC-based context-aware system architecture has been developed to apply to mobile intelligent robots which would assist old people at home in a context-aware manner.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.396-401
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• 2016

Owing to developments in the internet of things, many products have developed and various researches have processed. Smart home systems in Internet of things area are receiving attention from many people than the other areas. Autonomous mobile robots perform various parts in many industries. In this paper, a smart housekeeping robot was implemented using internet of things and an autonomous mobile robot. In order to make a smart housekeeping robot, Raspberry Pi, wireless USB camera, and uBrain robot of Huins Corp. is used. To control the robot, cell-phone connected with IP of Raspberry Pi, and then Raspberry Pi connected with uBrain robot using Bluetooth. a smart housekeeping robot was controlled using commands of a cell-phone application. If some user wants to move a robot automatically, we implemented that a robot can be chosen an autonomous driving mode from the user. In addition, we checked a realtime video using a cell-phone and computer. This smart housekeeping robot can help user check their own homes in real time.

• Asia-pacific Journal of Multimedia Services Convergent with Art, Humanities, and Sociology
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• v.6 no.10
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• pp.499-508
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• 2016

According to spreading K-pop globally, the market size related to K-pop stars is increasingly growing at home and abroad. Recently, services and products having direct interaction with the star are emerging. This research aims to propose a new service using a smart, connected social robotic figure that can support interaction between fans and K-pop stars. For this study, we begin by exploring literature about K-pop culture. Also, we investigate cases that connect between fans and stars and then build the development directions for a new service. Based on these development directions, we extract feasible technology and its interaction elements through analysing the cases of social robots. Finally, we propose the social robotic figure service in this research. This service proposed in this study can create and enhance diverse bidirectional communication between fans and stars through employing a user-customized, smart, connected figure based on a IoT platform. This research contributes to approaches for sustainable advance of K-pop through applying IoT technology.

• Archives of design research
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• v.18 no.2 s.60
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• pp.155-164
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• 2005

Home-service robots need to have sufficient spatial information about the surroundings for interacting with human intelligently and performing services efficiently. It is very important to investigate the efficient interaction style that supports map building task through human-robot collaboration. We first analyzed map building task with a cleaning robot and drew 4 design factors and tentative solutions, including map building procedure (task-preferred procedure/space- preferred procedure), LCD display installation (robot/robot+remote control), navigation method (push type/pull type), feedback modality(GUI/GUI+TTS). The design factors and tentative solutions were defined as independent variables and levels. This research investigated how those variables affect to the human task performance and behavior in map building tast. 8 kinds of experiment prototypes were built and usability test among 16 house wives was conducted for acquiring empirical data. As the experiment result, in terms of map building procedure, space-preferred procedure indicated better task performance than task-proffered procedure as we expected. For the LCD display installation factor, remote control with LCD display indicated higher task performance and subjective satisfaction. In robot navigation method, it was very difficult to find a significant difference between push type and pull type which contrary to our expectation. In fact, push type indicated higher subjective satisfaction. Also in feedback modality, we have acquired negative feedback an additional TTS operation guidance. It seems that robot's autonomy before achieving spatial information is rudiment condition which means users are just interacting with a mobile appliance. Thus they prefer remote-control-based interaction style in robot map building process as they used in traditional appliance control.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.23-41
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• 2019

Smart Factory is different from existing factory automation in that it aims to produce personalized products with minimum time and cost through ICT. However, previous researches, not from consumers but from product suppliers, have focused on technology trends and technology application methods. In order for Smart Factory to be successful, it must go beyond supplier-focus to meet the needs of consumers. In this study, we surveyed the purchase intention of the personalized product manufactured by smart factory. Influencing factors of purchase intention were drawn as consumers' need for uniqueness, innovativeness, need for touch, and privacy concern, based on previous research. As results of data analysis, it was confirmed that respondents were willing to purchase personalized products, and that consumers' need for uniqueness, innovativeness, and need for touch had a significant impact on purchase intention of personalized products. Our findings can be summarized as follows. First, Consumers' need for uniqueness was found to have positive effects(${\beta}=0.168$) on purchase intention of personalized products. The desire to differentiate themselves from others will be reflected in their personalized products. Therefore, consumers with a higher desire for uniqueness tend to be more willing to purchase personalized products. Second, consumer innovativeness was found to have positive effects(${\beta}=0.233$) on purchase intention of personalized products. Personalized shoes suggested in this study is a new type of personalized product that is manufactured by the latest information and communication technologies such as multi-function robots and 3D printing. Therefore, consumers seeking innovative new experiences are more willing to purchase personalized products. Third, need for touch was found to have positive effects(${\beta}=0.299$) on purchase intention of personalized products. In a smart factory environment, prosuming participation is given to consumers. If consumers participate in the product development process and reflect their requirements on the product, they are expected to increase their purchase intention by virtually satisfying the need for touch. Fourth, privacy concern was found to have no significantly related to purchase intention of personalized products. This is interpreted as a willingness to tolerate the risk of exposing personal information such as home address, telephone number, body size, and preference for consumers who feel highly useful in personalized products.