Watch out! There may be a Human. Addressing Invisible Humans in Social Navigation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method for detecting and addressing potential emergent humans in social navigation, enhancing robot safety and predictability by considering both visible and invisible humans.

Contribution

It proposes a new approach to detect 'invisible humans' and adapt robot navigation accordingly, addressing a gap in current human-aware navigation methods.

Findings

Effective detection of potential human emergences in simulations and real-world tests.

Improved robot navigation safety by anticipating unseen humans.

Enhanced handling of narrow passages and doorways in social navigation.

Abstract

Current approaches in human-aware or social robot navigation address the humans that are visible to the robot. However, it is also important to address the possible emergences of humans to avoid shocks or surprises to humans and erratic behavior of the robot planner. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to detect and address these human emergences called `invisible humans'. We determine the places from which a human, currently not visible to the robot, can appear suddenly and then adapt the path and speed of the robot with the anticipation of potential collisions. This is done while still considering and adapting humans present in the robot's field of view. We also show how this detection can be exploited to identify and address the doorways or narrow passages. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed methodology is shown through several simulated and real-world experiments.