Personal Space of Small Mobile Robot Moving towards Crouching, Sitting and Supine Adult Males

In this paper, the authors present a basic study of the planning techniques for human-robot living spaces. Taking into account the previous studies, the authors clarify at what distances adult males feel comfortable with a small mobile robot. The authors investigated the impact of differences in position in a personal distance of the robot. The authors make the robot to move towards the subjects at different speeds and from five different angles (0, 45, 90, 135 and 180) while they were crouching, sitting on the floor and supine. In this experiment, about setting up a small mobile robot, the authors explained the robot does not have a support function for the people watching. A questionnaire survey was also conducted before and after the experiments. The result is that differences were out to personal distance with the robot due to the difference in position. The research finds that personal distance also becomes small position changes, sight line becomes lower. In addition, individual distance is increased when the slow speed as well as the paper before.