Socially Acceptable Behaviour for Robots Approaching Humans using an Adaptable Personal Space

Abstract

In this paper a new adaptable model of the personal space is proposed. This model takes into account the position of a persons hands aiming to facilitate interactions with the human while maintaining an appropriate social distance during the approach. This personal space model has been used as a cost function in the path planning algorithm Transition-based Rapidly exploring Random Trees. It allows users to influence the robot's generated approach at the planning stage by varying their body and hand positions. Results from an online survey, where participants were shown different simulated approach behaviours, indicate that the model performs well when it comes to distance regulation and how close the robot comes during the approach. An interesting discovery from the survey is that the maintenance of eye contact, i.e. the robot keeping oriented towards the person during the approach, was positively associated with both the closeness of the robot during movement and judging the intentions of the robot for unaware users.