Publication Details

Roya Salek Shahrezaie, Lotey B. Manalo, Aaron Brantley, Casey Lynch, and David Feil-Seifer. "Advancing Socially-Aware Navigation for Public Spaces ." In International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), Naples, Italy, Aug 2022. IEEE. doi: 10.1109/RO-MAN53752.2022.9900653 ( pdf )


  • Keywords:
  • SARG
  • HRI
  • socially assistive robotics
  • perception
  • path-planning
  • Socially-Aware Navigation (SAN)
  • learning

Abstract

Mobile robots must navigate efficiently, reliably, and appropriately around people when acting in shared social environments. For robots to be accepted in such environments, we explore robot navigation for the social contexts of each setting. Navigating through dynamic environments solely considering a collision-free path has long been solved. In human-robot environments, the challenge is no longer about efficiently navigating from one point to the other. Autonomously detecting the context and adapting to an appropriate social navigation strategy is vital for social robots' long-term applicability in dense human environments. As complex social environments, museums are suitable for studying such behavior as they have many different navigation contexts in a small space.

Our prior Socially-Aware Navigation model considered context classification, object detection, and pre-defined rules to define navigation behavior in more simple contexts, such as a hallway or queue. This work uses environmental context and object information alongside more realistic interaction rules for complex social spaces. In the first part of the project, we convert real-world interactions into algorithmic rules for use in a robot's navigation system. Moreover, we use context recognition, object detection, and scene data for context-appropriate rule selection. We introduce our methodology of studying social behaviors in complex contexts and different analyses on our text corpus for museums and the presentation of extracted social norms. Finally, we demonstrate applying some of the rules in scenarios in the simulation environment.

Author Details

Name: Roya Salek Shahrezaie
email: rsalek@nevada.unr.edu
Status: Active

Name: Lotey Manalo
email: bmanalo@unr.edu
Status: Active

Name: Aaron Brantley
Status: Active

Name: Casey Lynch
Status: Inactive

Name: David Feil-Seifer
email: dave@cse.unr.edu
Website: http://cse.unr.edu/~dave
Phone: (775) 784-6469
Status: Active

BibTex Reference

@inproceedings{salek shahrezaie2022advancing,
  title={Advancing Socially-Aware Navigation for Public Spaces },
  author={Roya Salek Shahrezaie and Lotey B. Manalo and Aaron Brantley and Casey Lynch and David Feil-Seifer},
  year={2022},
  month={August},
  address={Naples, Italy},
  publisher={IEEE},
  doi={10.1109/RO-MAN53752.2022.9900653},
  booktitle={International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN)},
}

HTML Reference

<span class="authors">Roya Salek Shahrezaie, Lotey B. Manalo, Aaron Brantley, Casey Lynch, and David Feil-Seifer</span>. <span class="title">"Advancing Socially-Aware Navigation for Public Spaces ." </span> In <span class="booktitle">International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN)</span>, <span class="address">Naples, Italy</span>, <span class="month">Aug</span> <span class="year">2022</span>. <span class="ending">IEEE.</span> <span class="doi">doi: 10.1109/RO-MAN53752.2022.9900653</span>

Support

REU Site: Collaborative Human-Robot Interaction for Robots in the Field, National Science Foundation PI: David Feil-Seifer, co-PI: Emily Hand, Amount: $405,000, March 1, 2022 - Feb. 28, 2025

Social Robots and the Production of Space: Exploring the Socio-Spatial Dimensions of Human-Robot Interaction, National Science Foundation PI: Casey Lynch, co-PI: David Feil-Seifer, Amount: $398,066, Aug. 15, 2021 - July 31, 2024

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