Human-Centered Robot Navigation --- Toward a Harmoniously Coexisting Multi-Human and Multi-Robot Environment

This paper proposes a navigation algorithm that considers the states of humans and other robots in order to achieve harmonious coexistence between robots and humans. Robot navigation in the presence of humans and other robots is rarely to be considered in the field of robotics so far. When navigating through humans and robots with different functions, a robot should not only pay attention to obstacle avoidance and goal seeking, it should also take care of whether it interferes with other people or robots. To deal with this problem, we propose several harmonious rules, which guarantee a safe and smooth navigation in multi-human and multi-robot (MHMR) environment. Based on those rules, a practical navigation method–human-centered sensitive navigation (HCSN)–is proposed. HCSN considers the fact that both humans and robots have sensitive zones depending on their security regions or on psychological feeling of people. We model these zones as various sensitive fields with priorities, whereby robots tend to yield socially acceptable movements.