Social Roles and Baseline Proxemic Preferences for a Domestic Service Robot

The goal of our research is to develop socially acceptable behavior for domestic robots in a setting where a user and the robot are sharing the same physical space and interact with each other in close proximity. Specifically, our research focuses on approach distances and directions in the context of a robot handing over an object to a user. Our present study consisted of two parts. Firstly, we carried out a large-scale survey trying to identify the internal structure between users’ different social role expectations and the relationships between these and users’ technology usage. Results from this study led to the development of a measure for preferred robot social roles. In the second part, this measure was used in a live human–robot interaction (HRI) study in a home setting, designed to create a baseline understanding of human–robot Proxemics approach directions and distances for a Care-O-bot$$^{\circledR }$$®3 based on these roles. In order to support users interpretation of the robots intentions in those tasks, the HRI studies used a simple LED light display panel. Findings indicate that, participants were comfortable with the robot approaching to the closest implemented distance (0.5 m). For the task requiring relatively more coordination, participants preferred the robot to approach from the front to a larger extent than for tasks requiring less coordination. The ability to identify the signals from the LED display also impacted how participants evaluated the robots behaviour. Users who had previous experience of interacting with robots differentiated less between approaches, and also evaluated tasks requiring more coordination with the robot more favourably. The findings in the short-term sample were strongly influenced by expectations as to the social role expectation they had of the robot, suggesting that social expectations impact proxemic interactions even if the robot platform is clearly not humanoid.