Investigation of a Network Model for Educational-Support Robots Using RSNP

In recent years, the number of robots that interact with humans, such as guidance robots, has been increasing in commercial and public facilities. In educational-support robots have attracted attention in educational institutions owing to their effectiveness in supporting learning. Additionally, initiatives to advance the widespread use of robots through networked communication have led to the development, the Robot Service Network Protocol (RSNP), which is designed exclusively for robots. RSNP offers the advantages of secure communication with authentication and easy implementation across a wide variety of robots in a function-oriented library that accounts for multiple robot use conditions. In this study, we networked educational-support robots using RSNP and verified their practicality through load verification. Educational-support robots require a large amount of data to communicate during a single learning session, such as the facial expressions and grades of the learners, and secure and stable communication is required. In our experiments, we compared the data communication processing between RSNP and Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Additionally, we conducted load testing of RSNP under multiple conditions that assume high-frequency communication processing. The experimental results show that RSNP achieves a processing speed comparable to that of HTTP while exerting minimal impact on overall processing performance. This study demonstrates that RSNP communication is more effective than HTTP for educational-support robots.