Pedestrian-Robot Interaction Experiments in an Exit Corridor

TL;DR

This paper empirically investigates how a mobile robot affects pedestrian flow in an exit corridor, revealing that faster robot movement slows pedestrians and providing insights for designing robot-assisted evacuation systems.

Contribution

It presents the first empirical analysis of pedestrian-robot interaction in an exit corridor, demonstrating the passive influence of robot speed on pedestrian movement.

Findings

Pedestrians slow down in the presence of the robot.

Faster robot movement results in lower pedestrian velocities.

Qualitative consistency with previous simulation studies.

Abstract

The study of human-robot interaction (HRI) has received increasing research attention for robot navigation in pedestrian crowds. In this paper, we present empirical study of pedestrian-robot interaction in an uni-directional exit corridor. We deploy a mobile robot moving in a direction perpendicular to that of the pedestrian flow, and install a pedestrian motion tracking system to record the collective motion. We analyze both individual and collective motion of pedestrians, and measure the effect of the robot motion on the overall pedestrian flow. The experimental results show the effect of passive HRI, where the pedestrians' overall speed is slowed down in the presence of the robot, and the faster the robot moves, the lower the average pedestrian velocity becomes. Experiment results show qualitative consistency of the collective HRI effect with simulation results that was previously reported. The study can be used to guide future design of robot-assisted pedestrian evacuation algorithms.