A Review on Human–Robot Proxemics

Abstract

An emerging trend in utilizing service robots in a vast range of application areas could be seen nowadays as a promising effort to uplift the living standard. These service robots are intended to be used by non-expert users, and their service tasks often require navigation in human-populated environments. Thus, human-friendly navigation behavior is expected from these robots by users. A service robot should be aware of Human–Robot Proxemics (HRP) to facilitate human-friendly navigation behavior. This paper presents a review on HRP. Both user studies conducted for exploring HRP preferences and methods developed toward establishing HRP awareness in service robots are considered within the scope of the review. The available literature has been scrutinized to identify the limitations of state of the art and potential future work. Furthermore, important HRP parameters and behavior revealed by the existing user studies are summarized under one roof to smooth the availability of data required for developing HRP-aware behavior in service robots.

Evolution of Socially-Aware Robot Navigation

“…The result is the so-called proactive Social Motion Model (PSMM), which 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. A survey paper describing the social concepts of proxemics theory applied in the context of human-aware autonomous navigation was provided by Rios-Martinez et al [7], and more recently by Samarakoon et al [8]. In general, these navigation algorithms model human-robot interaction, emphasizing on maintaining the proper safety distances, but they do not consider human-robot cooperation.…”

“…The growing importance of the topic has given rise to several review articles analyzing these proposals in different ways. Concepts regarding the human factor were highlighted in the survey papers on proxemics ( [7,8]), on 13 February 2023). For the topic (TS = (social AND navigation)) AND TS = (robot), we obtain 723 results in the range from 1994 to 2022 (data from the current year, 2023, were not included as the year has not finished and these data could disturb the statistics).…”