Embodied social interaction for robots

Abstract

A key aspect of service robotics for everyday use is the motion of systems in close proximity to humans. It is here essential that the robot exhibits a behaviour that signals safe motion and awareness of the other actors in its environment. To facilitate this there is a need to endow the system with facilities for detection and tracking of objects in the vicinity of the platform, and to design a control law that enables motion generation which is considered socially acceptable. We present a system for in-door navigation in which the rules of proxemics are used to define interaction strategies for the platform. 1