Robot Gaze During Autonomous Navigation and Its Effect on Social Presence

Abstract As robots have become increasingly common in human-rich environments, it is critical that they are able to exhibit social cues be perceived as a cooperative and socially-conformant team member. We investigate the effect of robot gaze on people’s subjective perceptions mobile socially present entity three hallway navigation scenarios. The tested behaviors were path-oriented (looking at its own future path), or human-oriented nearest person), with fixed-gaze control. conduct real-world study 36 participants who walked through hallway, an online 233 shown simulated videos same Our results suggest preferred behavior scenario-dependent. Human-oriented which acknowledge presence human generally when cross paths. However, this benefit diminished scenarios involve less implicit interaction between human.