Develop Approaching Strategies for Social Robot to Ask for Assistance from Human

The use of robots is becoming more and more popular in today’s world. In order to perform better in an environment involving people, robots should behave in a way that makes people feel comfortable. The goal of this research is to improve approaching strategies that make people more likely to interact with the robot. To achieve this goal, I designed an experiment to see the reactions of human subjects when the robot uses different moving trajectories to approach and asks for help from humans. The experiment uses a Wizard-of-Oz (WoZ) study strategy, i.e. human subjects do not see the experimenter in the study location but think the robot acts autonomously. This strategy can help us observe reactions of human subjects when they interacting with a robot in a nonexperimental condition. This is an ongoing research. Experiments will be conducted throughout the spring term. The results of my experiments should indicate which moving trajectory and direction are more appropriate for the robot to use to approach people