Related papers: Toward Human-Like Social Robot Navigation: A Large…
Existing navigation policies for autonomous robots tend to focus on collision avoidance while ignoring human-robot interactions in social life. For instance, robots can pass along the corridor safer and easier if pedestrians notice them.…
In this paper, we present an algorithm to efficiently learn socially-compliant navigation policies from observations of human trajectories. As mobile robots come to inhabit and traffic social spaces, they must account for social cues and…
In the rapidly evolving landscape of autonomous mobile robots, the emphasis on seamless human-robot interactions has shifted towards autonomous decision-making. This paper delves into the intricate challenges associated with robotic…
Safe and efficient crowd navigation for mobile robot is a crucial yet challenging task. Previous work has shown the power of deep reinforcement learning frameworks to train efficient policies. However, their performance deteriorates when…
Reliable localization of people is fundamental for service and social robots that must operate in close interaction with humans. State-of-the-art human detectors often rely on RGB-D cameras or costly 3D LiDARs. However, most commercial…
A widely accepted explanation for robots planning overcautious or overaggressive trajectories alongside human is that the crowd density exceeds a threshold such that all feasible trajectories are considered unsafe -- the freezing robot…
In this paper, we consider the problem of designing collision-free, dynamically feasible, and socially-aware trajectories for robots operating in environments populated by humans. We define trajectories to be social-aware if they do not…
Reinforcement learning (RL) methods for social robot navigation show great success navigating robots through large crowds of people, but the performance of these learning-based methods tends to degrade in particularly challenging or…
If a robot can predict crowds in parts of its environment that are inaccessible to its sensors, then it can plan to avoid them. This paper proposes a fast, online algorithm that learns average crowd densities in different areas. It also…
Real world visual navigation requires robots to operate in unfamiliar, human-occupied dynamic environments. Navigation around humans is especially difficult because it requires anticipating their future motion, which can be quite…
As social robots become increasingly prevalent in day-to-day environments, they will participate in conversations and appropriately manage the information shared with them. However, little is known about how robots might appropriately…
We consider the problem of developing robots that navigate like pedestrians on sidewalks through city centers for performing various tasks including delivery and surveillance. One particular challenge for such robots is crossing streets…
The ultimate navigation efficiency of mobile robots in human environments will depend on how we will appraise them: merely as impersonal machines or as human-like agents. In the latter case, an agent may take advantage of the cooperative…
Modeling and predicting human mobility trajectories in urban areas is an essential task for various applications. The recent availability of large-scale human movement data collected from mobile devices have enabled the development of…
Enabling socially acceptable behavior for situated agents is a major goal of recent robotics research. Robots should not only operate safely around humans, but also abide by complex social norms. A key challenge for developing…
In this paper, we propose a novel navigation system for mobile robots in pedestrian-rich sidewalk environments. Sidewalks are unique in that the pedestrian-shared space has characteristics of both roads and indoor spaces. Like vehicles on…
Embodied navigation that adheres to social norms remains an open research challenge. Our SocialNav is a foundational model for socially-aware navigation with a hierarchical "brain-action" architecture, capable of understanding high-level…
Autonomously navigating a robot in everyday crowded spaces requires solving complex perception and planning challenges. When using only monocular image sensor data as input, classical two-dimensional planning approaches cannot be used.…
From learning assistance to companionship, social robots promise to enhance many aspects of daily life. However, social robots have not seen widespread adoption, in part because (1) they do not adapt their behavior to new users, and (2)…
In this work, we analyze video data and interviews from a public deployment of two trash barrel robots in a large public space to better understand the sensemaking activities people perform when they encounter robots in public spaces. Based…