Proactive human approach in dynamic environments

This video presents a motion planning method enabling an autonomous mobile robot to approach a person to initiate a conversation proactively. The proposed concept implements social aspects to give motions a more human-like appearance. This is intended since experiments discussed in literature have shown that it is easier for people to predict and read the purpose of human-like movements. User study results show that the readability of the approach behavior is improved by including parameters such as path execution speed, distance between goal pose and person, position and orientation in front of the person, and trajectory shape. The video depicts the results of an implemented human approach planner for dynamic environments. It plans a trajectory towards a person applying the named set of social constraints. Simulations and real world experiments show how the approaching behavior smoothly brings the robot close to a person for interaction.