Navigation for human-robot interaction tasks

One major design goal in human-robot interaction is that the robots behave in an intelligent manner, preferably in a similar way as humans. This constraint must also be taken into consideration when the navigation system for the platform is developed. However, research in human-robot interaction is often restricted to other components of the system including gestures, manipulation, and speech. On the other hand, research for mobile robot navigation focuses primarily on the task of reaching a certain goal point in an environment. We believe that these two problems can not be treated separately for a personal robot that coexists with humans in the same surrounding. Persons move constantly while they are interacting with each other. Hence, also a robot should do that, which poses constraints on the navigation system. This type of navigation is the focus of this paper. Methods have been developed for a robot to join a group of people engaged in a conversation. Preliminary results show that the platform's moving patterns are very similar to the ones of the persons. Moreover, this dynamic interaction has been judged naturally by the test subjects, which greatly increases the perceived intelligence of the robot.