Can’t You See I Am Bothered? Human-inspired Suggestive Avoidance

We studied how robots could stop people from repeatedly obstructing them by using reactions that people commonly use. From 35 hours of observation of people in a shopping mall, we identified one commonly used reaction, which we call suggestive avoidance. During suggestive avoidance, people avoid a person obstructing them by making a quick movement to the side while rotating their body and gazing toward the target person in a way that seems to imply that they were bothered by the obstruction. We modeled suggestive avoidance behavior and implemented it in a robot and tested it both in a lab experiment and in a field study. The result from the lab study, where we asked participants to bother a robot, confirmed that people perceive a robot using suggestive avoidance as being more bothered, as well as more human-like. The result of the field study confirmed that suggestive avoidance makes people less likely to bother the robot again.