From HRI to CRI: Crowd Robot Interaction - understanding the effect of robots on crowd motion

How does the presence of a robot affect pedestri- ans and crowd dynamics, and does this influence vary across robot type? In this paper, we took the first step towards an- swering this question by performing a crowd-robot gate- crossing experiment. The study involved 28 participants and two distinct robot representatives: A smart wheelchair and a Pepper humanoid robot. Collected data includes: video recordings; robot and participant trajectories; and partici- pants’ responses to post-interaction questionnaires. Quanti- tative analysis on the trajectories suggests the robot affects crowd dynamics in terms of trajectory regularity and interac- tion complexity. Qualitative results indicate that pedestrians tend to be more conservative and follow “social rules” while passing a wheelchair compared to a humanoid robot. These insights can be used to design a social navigation strategy that allows more natural interaction by considering the robot effect on the crowd dynamics