As robots have become increasingly common in human-rich environments, it is critical that they are able to exhibit social cues to be perceived as a cooperative and socially-conformant team member. We investigate the effect of robot gaze cues on people's subjective perceptions of a mobile robot as a socially present entity in three common hallway navigation scenarios. The tested robot gaze behaviors were path-oriented (looking at its own future path), or person-oriented (looking at the nearest person), with fixed-gaze as the control. We conduct a real-world study with 36 participants who walked through the hallway, and an online study with 233 participants who were shown simulated videos of the same scenarios. Our results suggest that the preferred gaze behavior is scenario-dependent. Person-oriented gaze behaviors which acknowledge the presence of the human are generally preferred when the robot and human cross paths. However, this benefit is diminished in scenarios that involve less implicit interaction between the robot and the human.

翻译：随着机器人在人类密集环境中的日益普及，它们能够展示社交线索以被视为合作且符合社会规范的团队成员变得至关重要。我们研究了在三种常见的走廊导航场景中，机器人的视线线索如何影响人们将移动机器人视为具有社会存在感实体的主观感受。测试的机器人视线行为包括路径导向（注视自身未来路径）、人物导向（注视最近的人），并以固定视线作为对照组。我们开展了一项包含36名参与者的真实走廊行走实验，以及一项包含233名观看相同场景模拟视频的在线研究。结果表明，偏好视线行为取决于具体场景。当机器人与人类路径交叉时，承认人类存在的人物导向视线行为通常更受青睐。但在涉及机器人与人类间隐性互动较少的场景中，这种优势会减弱。