Customer-Specific Robotic Attendant for VR Simulators

With regard to virtual reality (VR) simulators, direct guidance is needed due to the complex procedures and safety of customers compared with simple coin-op amusement games. However, it is difficult for human attendants to repeatedly guide the customer with a high level of service quality. In this article, we propose a new type of robotic attendant for VR simulators, which provides personalized high-quality services and automatically operates the VR simulators in VR theme parks. In addition, the robotic attendant improves customer satisfaction by providing personalized services based on the estimation of the customer's age, gender, and game progress. Finally, we experimentally show that the personalized services provided by the robotic attendant improve customer satisfaction. The results of the satisfaction questionnaire and independent-samples t-Test validate our proposed scheme. Note to Practitioners-This article was motivated by the high operating costs of VR theme parks as the VR industry grew. At current VR theme parks, human attendants provide one-on-one services to their customers on how to operate the simulator. Therefore, we automate the abovementioned procedure to reduce operating costs and increase turnover rate and ticket sales at the same time. In addition, we also seek to improve customer satisfaction as well as automatic operation. In order to achieve the aforementioned objectives, the proposed robotic attendant uses camera images to obtain the age and gender of the customer and uses the game data to track game progress. Then, the robotic attendant provides customer-specific voice services using personal information. Experimental results show that the personalized services provided by the robotic attendant improve customer satisfaction.