Pedestrian-Robot Interaction Experiments in an Exit Corridor
This incremental work addresses robot navigation in crowds for applications like evacuation algorithms.
The study investigated how a mobile robot moving perpendicular to pedestrian flow in an exit corridor affects pedestrian motion, finding that the robot's presence slows overall pedestrian speed, with faster robot motion leading to lower average pedestrian velocity.
The study of human-robot interaction (HRI) has received increasing research attention for robot navigation in pedestrian crowds. In this paper, we present empirical study of pedestrian-robot interaction in an uni-directional exit corridor. We deploy a mobile robot moving in a direction perpendicular to that of the pedestrian flow, and install a pedestrian motion tracking system to record the collective motion. We analyze both individual and collective motion of pedestrians, and measure the effect of the robot motion on the overall pedestrian flow. The experimental results show the effect of passive HRI, where the pedestrians' overall speed is slowed down in the presence of the robot, and the faster the robot moves, the lower the average pedestrian velocity becomes. Experiment results show qualitative consistency of the collective HRI effect with simulation results that was previously reported. The study can be used to guide future design of robot-assisted pedestrian evacuation algorithms.