A visual method for robot proxemics measurements

Human interaction knows many non-verbal aspects. The use of space, among others, is guided by social rules. Not conforming to these rules may cause discomfort or even mis- communication. If robots are to interact with people, they must follow similar rules. The current work tries to identify factors that influence human preferred interaction distance in conversation-like interaction. For the measurement of interaction distances an accurate and objective visual method is presented. In this method, the researcher does influence the results by disturbing the interaction. It is found that subjects choose interaction distances com- parable to those in human interaction. Variations are mostly explained by subject age and, depending on age, by gender or robot appearance. This is the first time, to our knowledge, that a clear age and gender effect is found in human-robot interaction-distance.