As Human-Robot Interaction becomes more sophisticated, measuring the performance of a social robot is crucial to gauging the effectiveness of its behavior. However, social behavior does not necessarily have strict performance metrics that other autonomous behavior can have. Indeed, when considering robot navigation, a socially-appropriate action may be one that is sub-optimal, resulting in longer paths, longer times to get to a goal. Instead, we can rely on subjective assessments of the robot's social performance by a participant in a robot interaction or by a bystander. In this paper, we use the newly-validated Perceived Social Intelligence (PSI) scale to examine the perception of non-humanoid robots in non-verbal social scenarios. We show that there are significant differences between the perceived social intelligence of robots exhibiting SAN behavior compared to one using a traditional navigation planner in scenarios such as waiting in a queue and group behavior.

CHS: Small: Socially-Aware Navigation, National Science Foundation PI: David Feil-Seifer, co-PI: Monica Nicolescu, Amount: $500,000, Sept. 1, 2017 - May 31, 2022

REU Site: Collaborative Human-Robot Interaction, National Science Foundation PI: David Feil-Seifer, co-PI: Shamik Sengupta, Amount: $360,000, Feb. 1, 2018 - Jan. 31, 2022