Human-Aware Navigation Using External Omnidirectional Cameras

If robots are to invade our homes and offices, they will have to interact more naturally with humans. Natural interaction will certainly include the ability of robots to plan their motion, accounting for the social norms enforced. In this paper we propose a novel solution for Human-Aware Navigation resorting to external omnidirectional static cameras, used to implement a vision-based person tracking system. The proposed solution was tested in a typical domestic indoor scenario in four different experiments. The results show that the robot is able to cope with human-aware constraints, defined after common proxemics rules.