Psychological Effects on Positional Relationships Between a Person and a Human-Following Robot

A person-following robot must understand the psychological effects of a user to maintain a good relationship with them. In this paper, we define factors that affect the user's psychological states by factor analysis. Also, we present an overall score of the following effect for various following positions based on user evaluation. The result shows that a higher score is obtained if the robot follows close and is beside the person than that if the robot follows the person from a distance.