A service robot for peopled environments-finding lined people by stereo vision and standing in line

Recent research results on mobile robot navigation systems make it promising to utilize them in service fields. But in order to utilize the robot in a peopled environment, it should recognize and respond to people's social behaviors. In this paper, we describe a social robot that stands in line as people do. Our system uses the concept of personal space for modeling a line of people and we have experimentally measured the actual size of the personal space when people form lines. The system employs stereo vision to recognize lines of people. We demonstrate our ideas with a mobile robot navigation system that can purchase a cup of coffee, even if people are waiting in line for service.