Recently, quadruped robots have been well developed with potential applications in different areas, such as care homes, hospitals, and other social areas. To ensure their integration in such social contexts, it is essential to understand people's proxemic preferences around such robots. In this paper, we designed a human-quadruped-robot interaction study (N = 32) to investigate the effect of 1) different facing orientations and 2) the gaze of a moving robot on human proxemic distance. Our work covers both static and dynamic interaction scenarios. We found a statistically significant effect of both the robot's facing direction and its gaze on preferred personal distances. The distances humans established towards certain robot behavioral modes reflect their attitudes, thereby guiding the design of future autonomous robots.

翻译：近年来，四足机器人已得到充分发展，在养老院、医院及其他社会领域具有潜在应用。为确保其融入此类社交环境，理解人们对此类机器人的空间距离偏好至关重要。本文设计了一项人-四足机器人交互研究（N=32），旨在探究：1）不同朝向方位与2）移动机器人的视线对人类空间距离的影响。本研究涵盖静态与动态交互场景。研究发现，机器人的朝向方向和视线对人类偏好的个人距离均具有统计学显著影响。人类针对特定机器人行为模式所建立的距离反映了其态度，从而为未来自主机器人的设计提供指导。