How Do Humans Adjust Their Motion Patterns in Mobile Robots Populated Retail Environments?

Abstract

In the retail environment, mobile robots start to serve as customer helpers and human worker assistants, which necessitates a safe, seamless, and affective human-robot interaction. Individuals’ physical responses during those interactions become crucial factors to consider in order to improve robots’ functionality and system productivity. The purpose of this study was to assess individuals’ physical responses to mobile robots in a typical retail environment. Eight participants were recruited to complete shopping tasks (i.e., cart pushing, item picking, and item sorting) with and without a mobile robot. Biomechanics analysis showed that participants spent more time walking between shelves with a reduced walking speed and they demonstrated deteriorated walking stability with the mobile robot in the same space. Meanwhile, the mobile robot induced more posture adaptation in participants’ distal segments (knee and ankle) during cart pushing and more posture adaptation in their proximal segments (hip) during item searching and sorting tasks. In addition, this study revealed that the mobile robot had a greater impact on participants’ locomotion activities (walking) rather than other activities (item searching and sorting).