Dynamics of social positioning patterns in group-robot interactions

When a mobile robot interacts with a group of people, it has to consider its position and orientation. We introduce a novel study aimed at generating hypotheses on suitable behavior for such social positioning, explicitly focusing on interaction with small groups of users and allowing for the temporal and social dynamics inherent in most interactions. In particular, the interactions we look at are approach, converse and retreat. In this study, groups of three participants and a telepresence robot (controlled remotely by a fourth participant) solved a task together while we collected quantitative and qualitative data, including tracking of positioning/orientation and ratings of the behaviors used. In the data we observed a variety of patterns that can be extrapolated to hypotheses using inductive reasoning. One such pattern/hypothesis is that a (telepresence) robot could pass through a group when retreating, without this affecting how comfortable that retreat is for the group members. Another is that a group will rate the position/orientation of a (telepresence) robot as more comfortable when it is aimed more at the center of that group.