The Perceived Social Intelligence of Robots with Socially-Aware Navigation

Abstract

The interactions we share with robots benefit greatly from Socially-Aware Navigation (SAN). Unlike traditional navigation planners, Socially-Aware Navigation takes into account social norms while planning its movement. Robots with SAN may be influencing how we perceive their social intelligence. We use the newly-validated Perceived Social Intelligence (PSI) scale to examine our perception of non-humanoid robots in scenarios such as: hallway behavior, joining a group, waiting in a queue, and art gallery presentations. With non-verbal interactions such as these, robots have the potential to become successful socially intelligent agents. The PSI scale measures the perceived social information processing capabilities of robots. This study further investigates prior work on Socially-Aware Navigational planning by measuring the perceived social intelligence of these agents. We hypothesize that humans will perceive the robot with Socially-Aware Navigation as socially intelligent when compared to a robot with traditional navigation.