Active peripersonal space for more intuitive HRI

In face-to-face interaction, humans coordinate actions in their surroundings with the help of a well structured spatial representation. For example on a dinner table, everybody exactly knows which objects belong to her and where she is allowed to grasp. To have robots, e.g. receptionists, act accordingly, we conducted an on-line survey about the expectations humans have while interacting with such a robot. Results indicate that humans attribute the robot handedness and an awareness of distance and territoriality in its own peripersonal space. In order to align a robot's behavior to these expectations, we have have developed a first spatial representation of the robots peripersonal space.