Mobile robot navigation for human-robot social interaction

Abstract

Human social interactions are believed to be described by a mathematical model called the Social Force Model (SFM). A variety of mobile robot research has often used the SFM to generate an appropriate navigation behavior. However, to create a mobile robot that moves around in a human-populated environment in a socially acceptable way, it should be stressed that the social conventions are strictly obeyed. This paper proposes an extended SFM between humans and robots, called the Social Relationship Model (SRM), to enable mobile robots to generate navigation paths in a human-like manner. Simulation results show notable advantages of SRM over the Transition based Rapidly Random Tree (T-RRT) path planning algorithm. The proposed method ensures a socially acceptable robot path, one of the most important issues for human-robot symbiosis.