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This paper explores the problem of embodied interaction between a service robot and a person in a hallway setting. For operation in environments with people that have limited experience with robots, a behaviour that signals awareness of the persons and safety of motion is essential. A control strategy based on human spatial behaviour studies is presented that adopts human-robot interaction patterns similar to those used in person-person encounters. The results of a pilot study with human subjects are presented in which the users have evaluated the acceptability of the robot behaviour patterns during passage with respect to three basic parameters: the robot speed, the signaling distance at which the robot starts the maneuver and the lateral distance from the person for safe passage. The study has shown a good overall user response and has provided some useful indications on how to design a hallway passage behaviour that could be most acceptable to human users.

In this paper, the design of an office-guide robot for social interaction studies is presented. We are interested in studying the impact of passage behaviours in casual encounters. While the system offers assistance in locating the appropriate office that a visitor wants to reach, it is expected to engage in a passing behaviour to allow free passage for other persons that it may encounter. Through use of such an approach it is possible to study the effect of social interaction in a situation that is much more natural than out-of-context user studies. The system has been tested in an early evaluation phase when it worked for almost 7 hours. A total of 64 interactions with people were registered and 13 passage behaviors were performed to conclude that this framework can be successfully used for the evaluation of passing behaviors in natural contexts of operation.

Casual encounters with mobile robots for non-experts can be a challenge due to lack of an interaction model. The present work is based on the rules from proxemics which are used to design a passing strategy. In narrow corridors the lateral distance of passage is a key parameter to consider. An implemented system has been used in a small study to verify the basic parametric design for such a system. In total 10 subjects evaluated variations in proxemics for encounters with a robot in a corridor setting. The user feedback indicates that entering the intimate sphere of people is less comfortable, however a too significant avoidance is also considered unnecessary. Adequate signaling of avoidance is a behaviour that must be carefully tuned.