Adaptive Personal Space for Humanizing Mobile Robots

摘要

Human beings are fascinating creatures. Their behavior and appearance cannot be compared with any other living organism in the world. They have two distinct features with compared to any other living being; unique physical nature and emotions / feelings. Anybody who studies on humans or tries to construct human like machines should consider these two vital facts. When robots are interacting with humans and other objects, they certainly have a safe distance between them and the object. Some of the problems in concern are how can this distance be optimized when interacting with humans; will there be any advantages over achieving this; will it help to improve the condition of robots; can it be a mere constant distance; how will the humans react, etc. In order to "humanize" robots, they (robots) should also have certain understanding of such emotions that we, humans have. The present main objective is to "teach" one such human understanding, commonly known as "personal space" to autonomous mobile robots. As Simmons et al., 1997 described, recent research in mobile robot navigation has utilized autonomous mobile robots in service fields. To operate them in an environment with people, it requires more than just localization and navigation. The robots should recognize and act according to human social behavior to share the resources without conflict Sometimes, even when humans interact with each other, it leads to resource conflict. At such times humans use social rules to maintain order The comfort level of the humans for which the robot is working will be very important if the robot is to do its job effectively. Extensive research is being performed in the area of robotics to improve the conditions of the robots, advancing the abilities to do specific tasks, motion planning, etc. However, very little work has been performed in trying to understand how people would interact with a robot, how to make them comfortable, factors that make uncomfortable or threatening, methods or ways for robots to indicate their feelings, etc. to analyze the aesthetic qualities of the behavior patterns of robots As in the very beginning of the mobile robotic systems, there had been some kind of distance or space between the robots to any other object in the vicinity. This was just a mere distance for safety for easy maneuvering and for collision avoidance. As