Publication

Robot approaching and engaging people in a human-robot companion framework

Conference Article

Conference

IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)

Edition

2018

Pages

8200-8205

Doc link

https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS.2018.8594149

File

Download the digital copy of the doc pdf document

Abstract

This paper presents a new model to make robots capable of approaching and engaging people with a human-like behavior, while they are walking in a side-by-side formation with a person. This method extends our previous work [1], which allows the robot to adapt its navigation behaviour according to the person being accompanied and the dynamic environment. In the current work, the robot is able to predict the best encounter point between the human-robot group and the approached person. Then, in the encounter point the robot modifies its position to achieve an engagement with both people. The encounter point is computed using a gradient descent method that takes into account all people predictions. Moreover, we make use of the Extended Social Force Model (ESFM), and it is modified to include the dynamic goal. The method has been validated over several situations and in real-life experiments, in addition, a user study has been realized to reveal the social acceptability of the robot in this task.

Categories

humanoid robots, mobile robots, service robots, social aspects of automation.

Author keywords

Robot Companion Side-by-Side, Robot Navigation, Human-Robot Interaction, Human-Robot Collaboration, Huma-Robot approach.

Scientific reference

E. Repiso, A. Garrell Zulueta and A. Sanfeliu. Robot approaching and engaging people in a human-robot companion framework, 2018 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2018, Madrid, Spain, pp. 8200-8205.