“I would like to get close to you”: Making robot personal space invasion less intrusive with a social gaze cue

Abstract

How can a social robot get physically close to the people it needs to interact with? We investigated the effect of a social gaze cue by a human-sized mobile robot on the effects of personal space invasion by that robot. In our 2× 2 between-subject experiment, our robot would approach our participants (n = 83), with/without personal space invasion, and with/without a social gaze cue. With a questionnaire, we measured subjective perception of warmth, competence, and comfort after such an interaction. In addition, we used on-board sensors and a tracking system to measure the dynamics of social positioning behavior. While we did find significant differences in the social positioning dynamics of the participants, no such effect was found upon quantitative analysis of perception of the robot. In a subsequent inductive analysis we further investigated these results, our findings suggesting that the social cue did play a role for the participants – particularly related to their perceived safety.