A Route-based Agility Approach for Social Robots

Human robot interaction is increasingly becoming an important subject of research as robots become more pervasive in human spaces. In this paper, we describe generating navigation paths that are more socially acceptable. A human user first divides the operating environment into segments, and then connects all adjacent segments by defining topological paths. These paths form the preferred routes through which robots should navigate, injecting a form of social norm such as not using certain private areas as intermediate waypoints, and maintaining a keep-left/right behavior in walkways. Given arbitrary start and destination points, we compute appropriate entry and exit locations into any of the fixed paths, and move there by using existing agility based planning methods. Once the robot gets onto the prescribed paths, it stays on these fixed routes but is allowed to make slight deviations to avoid obstacles. Collectively, our navigation framework exploits the best of route based navigation and agile based motion planning. We empirically show that our navigation method produces efficient movement in a hospital ward and hotel that is also socially acceptable.