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International Conference on Social Robotics

ICSR 2018: Social Robotics pp 431–440Cite as

Comfortable Passing Distances for Robots

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 11357))

Abstract

If autonomous robots are expected to operate in close proximity with people, they should be able to deal with human proxemics and social rules. Earlier research has shown that robots should respect personal space when approaching people, although the quantitative details vary with robot model and direction of approach. It would seem that similar considerations apply when a robot is only passing by, but direct measurement of the comfort of the passing distance is still missing. Therefore the current study measured the perceived comfort of varying passing distances of the robot on each side of a person in a corridor. It was expected that comfort would increase with distance until an optimum was reached, and that people would prefer a left passage over a right passage. Results showed that the level of comfort did increase with distance up to about 80 cm, but after that it remained constant. There was no optimal distance. Surprisingly, the side of passage had no effect on perceived comfort. These findings show that robot proxemics for passing by differ from approaching a person. The implications for modelling human-aware navigation and personal space models are discussed.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Margot M. E. Neggers, Raymond H. Cuijpers & Peter A. M. Ruijten

Authors
  1. Margot M. E. Neggers
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  2. Raymond H. Cuijpers
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  3. Peter A. M. Ruijten
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Margot M. E. Neggers .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. The National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Shuzhi Sam Ge

  2. Qatar University, Doha, Qatar

    John-John Cabibihan

  3. University Carlos III de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Miguel A. Salichs

  4. Canterbury University, Auckland, New Zealand

    Elizabeth Broadbent

  5. Wichita State University, Wichita, KS, USA

    Hongsheng He

  6. The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Alan R. Wagner

  7. Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Álvaro Castro-González

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Neggers, M.M.E., Cuijpers, R.H., Ruijten, P.A.M. (2018). Comfortable Passing Distances for Robots. In: Ge, S., et al. Social Robotics. ICSR 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11357. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05204-1_42

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05204-1_42

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-05203-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-05204-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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