Would You Mind Me if I Pass by You? Socially-Appropriate Behaviour for an Omni-based Social Robot in Narrow Environment

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Interacting physically with robots and sharing environment with them leads to situations where humans and robots have to cross each other in narrow corridors. In these cases, the robot has to make space for the human to pass. From observation of human-human crossing behaviours, we isolated two main factors in this avoiding behaviour: body rotation and sliding motion. We implemented a robot controller able to vary these factors and explored how this variation impacted on people’s perception. Results from a within participants study involving 23 participants show that people prefer a robot rotating its body when crossing them. Additionally, a sliding motion is rated as being warmer. These results show the importance of social avoidance when interacting with humans.