Autonomous mobile robots that operate in environments with people are expected to be able to deal with human proxemics and social distances. Previous research investigated how robots can approach persons or how to implement human-aware navigation algorithms. However, experimental research on how robots can avoid a person in a comfortable way is largely missing. The aim of the current work is to experimentally determine the shape and size of personal space of a human passed by a robot. In two studies, both a humanoid as well as a non-humanoid robot were used to pass a person at different sides and distances, after which they were asked to rate their perceived comfort. As expected, perceived comfort increases with distance. However, the shape was not circular: passing at the back of a person is more uncomfortable compared to passing at the front, especially in the case of the humanoid robot. These results give us more insight into the shape and size of personal space in human–robot interaction. Furthermore, they can serve as necessary input to human-aware navigation algorithms for autonomous mobile robots in which human comfort is traded off with efficiency goals.

预计在有人的环境中运行的自主移动机器人将能够处理人类距离和社交距离。之前的研究调查了机器人如何接近人或如何实现人类感知的导航算法。然而，关于机器人如何以舒适的方式避开人的实验研究在很大程度上缺失。当前工作的目的是通过实验确定机器人经过的人类个人空间的形状和大小。在两项研究中，人形机器人和非人形机器人都被用来从不同侧面和距离的人身边经过，然后要求他们对自己的舒适度进行评分。正如预期的那样，感知的舒适度随着距离的增加而增加。然而，形状不是圆形的：从一个人的后面通过比从前面通过更不舒服，特别是在人形机器人的情况下。这些结果让我们更深入地了解人机交互中个人空间的形状和大小。此外，它们可以作为自主移动机器人的人类感知导航算法的必要输入，其中人类舒适度与效率目标之间进行权衡。