An Affordance-Based Conceptual Framework for Spatial Behavior of Social Robots

Abstract

Socially aware robots have to coordinate their actions considering the spatial requirements of the humans with whom they interact. We propose a general framework based on the notion of affordances that generalizes geometrical accounts to the problem of human-aware placement of robot activities. The framework provides a conceptual instrument to take into account the heterogeneous abilities and affordances of humans, robots, and environmental entities. We discuss how knowledge about (socio-)spacial aspects of affordances can be used in various reasoning tasks relevant to human-robot interaction. Applying the notion of a practical reason, socially-aware robots are able to solve the social activity-placement problem.