Behavior of Delivery Robot in Human-Robot Collaborative Spaces During Navigation

Abstract

Navigation is an essential skill for robots. It becomes a cumbersome task for the robot in a human-populated environment, and Industry 5.0 is an emerging trend that focuses on the interaction between humans and robots. Robot behavior in a social setting is the key to human acceptance while ensuring human comfort and safety. With the advancement in robotics technology, the true use cases of robots in the tourism and hospitality industry are expanding in number. There are very few experimental studies focusing on how people perceive the navigation behavior of a delivery robot. A robotic platform named “PI” has been designed, which incorporates proximity and vision sensors. The robot utilizes a real-time object recognition algorithm based on the You Only Look Once (YOLO) algorithm to detect objects and humans during navigation. This study is aimed towards evaluating human experience, for which we conducted a study among 36 participants to explore the perceived social presence, role, and perception of a delivery robot exhibiting different behavior conditions while navigating in a hotel corridor. The participants’ responses were collected and compared for different behavior conditions demonstrated by the robot and results show that humans prefer an assistant role of a robot enabled with audio and visual aids exhibiting social behavior. Further, this study can be useful for developers to gain insight into the expected behavior of a delivery robot.