Overlapping Social Navigation Principles: A Framework for Social Robot Navigation

Abstract

As autonomous robots become integrated into society, they must socially navigate around humans. We propose that effective social robot navigation relies on three key principles: social norms, perceived safety, and legibility. Our framework, Overlapping Social Navigation Principles, suggests that the strength of each principle is influenced by the presence of other principles. To test our framework, we implemented SRN behaviors on an autonomous robot in a passing scenario and conducted an online study where participants ranked videos of different SRN behavior combinations. Our findings show that incorporating all three principles enhances SRN, with social norms having the greatest impact.