Initial Design, Implementation and Technical Evaluation of a Context-aware Proxemics Planner for a Social Robot

Home Companion Robots need to be able to support users in their daily living activities and to be socially adaptive. They should take account of users’ individual preferences, environments and social situations in order to behave in a socially acceptable manner and to gain acceptance into the household. They will need to be context-aware, taking account of any relevant contextual information and improve on delivering services by adapting to users’ requirements. We present the design, implementation and technical evaluation of a Context-aware Proxemics Planner which aims to improve a robots’ social behaviour by adapting its distances and orientation to the user in terms of interpersonal space, based on contextual information regarding the task, user and the robot.