Identifying people with soft-biometrics at Fleet Week

Person identification is a fundamental robotic capability for long-term interactions with people. It is important to know with whom the robot is interacting for social reasons, as well as to remember user preferences and interaction histories. There exist, however, a number of different features by which people can be identified. This work describes three alternative, soft biometrics (clothing, complexion, and height) that can be learned in real-time and utilized by a humanoid robot in a social setting for person identification. The use of these biometrics is then evaluated as part of a novel experiment in robotic person identification carried out at Fleet Week, New York City in May, 2012. In this experiment, Octavia employed soft biometrics to discriminate between groups of 3 people. 202 volunteers interacted with Octavia as part of the study, interacting with the robot from multiple locations in a challenging environment.