Robot companion: A social-force based approach with human awareness-navigation in crowded...

A social-force based approach with human awareness-navigation in crowded environments

More info:
http://www.iri.upc.edu/publications/s...

Authors: G. Ferrer, A.Garrell, A. Sanfeliu
Conference:IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2013

Voice: G. Ferrer

Abstract:
Robots accompanying humans is one of the core capacities every service robot deployed in urban settings should have. We present a novel robot companion approach based on the so-called Social Force Model (SFM). A new model of robot-person interaction is obtained using the SFM which is suited for our robots Tibi and Dabo. Additionally, we propose an interactive scheme for robot's human-awareness navigation using the SFM and prediction information. Moreover, we present a new metric to evaluate the robot companion performance based on vital spaces and comfortableness criteria. Also, a multimodal human feedback is proposed to enhance the behavior of the system. The validation of the model is accomplished throughout an extensive set of simulations and real-life experiments.