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Toward Socially Aware Robot Navigation in Dynamic and Crowded Environments: A Proactive Social Motion Model | IEEE Journals & Magazine | IEEE Xplore

Toward Socially Aware Robot Navigation in Dynamic and Crowded Environments: A Proactive Social Motion Model


Abstract:

Safe and social navigation is the key to deploying a mobile service robot in a human-centered environment. Widespread acceptability of mobile service robots in daily life...Show More

Abstract:

Safe and social navigation is the key to deploying a mobile service robot in a human-centered environment. Widespread acceptability of mobile service robots in daily life is hindered by robot's inability to navigate in crowded and dynamic human environments in a socially acceptable way that would guarantee human safety and comfort. In this paper, we propose an effective proactive social motion model (PSMM) that enables a mobile service robot to navigate safely and socially in crowded and dynamic environments. The proposed method considers not only human states (position, orientation, motion, field of view, and hand poses) relative to the robot but also social interactive information about human-object and human group interactions. This allows development of the PSMM that consists of elements of an extended social force model and a hybrid reciprocal velocity obstacle technique. The PSMM is then combined with a path planning technique to generate a motion planning system that drives a mobile robot in a socially acceptable manner and produces respectful and polite behaviors akin to human movements. Note to Practitioners-In this paper, we validated the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed proactive social motion model (PSMM) through both simulation and real-world experiments under the newly proposed human comfortable safety indices. To do that, we first implemented the entire navigation system using the open-source robot operating system. We then installed it in a simulated robot model and conducted experiments in a simulated shopping mall-like environment to verify its effectiveness. We also installed the proposed algorithm on our mobile robot platform and conducted experiments in our office-like laboratory environment. Our results show that the developed socially aware navigation framework allows a mobile robot to navigate safely, socially, and proactively while guaranteeing human safety and comfort in crowded and dynamic environments. In this paper, we exami...
Published in: IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering ( Volume: 14, Issue: 4, October 2017)
Page(s): 1743 - 1760
Date of Publication: 16 August 2017

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