Investigating the effectiveness of different interaction modalities for spatial human-robot interaction

Abstract

With the increasing use of social robots in real environments, one of the areas of research requiring more attention is the study of human-robot interaction (HRI) when a person and robot are moving close to each other. Understanding effective ways to design how a robot should communicate its intention during dynamic movement is based on what people's expectations are and how they interpret different cues from the robot. Building on the existing literature, we tested a range of non-verbal cues such as eye contact, gaze and head nodding as part of the robot's behaviour during close proximate passing. The research aimed to investigate the effects of these cues, as well as their combination with body posture, on the efficiency of passing and the quality of HRI. Our results show that the combination of eye contact and the robot turning sideways is the most effective and appropriate compared to other modalities.