Analyzing Human Avoidance Behavior in Narrow Passage

To ensure that humans and robots can safely coexist, the ability to recognize human behavior is a prerequisite for robots and a fundamental technical challenge for researchers. Current research can only recognize relatively simple cases of human behavior due to the lack of enough data and archetypally designed experiments. Our study elucidates human behavior in a systematic manner by observing the behavior of human subjects under more complex situations where they are surrounded by other people or objects to address the challenge. We focus on the following common situation that people pass each other through a narrow passage. We constructed a motion capture room with a narrow passage environment and measured the motion of human subjects performing different tasks. In addition, during the narrow passage experiment, we made subjects hold different daily necessaries (such as a backpack) to observe influences on human behavior. Our study found that passing and avoidance behavior exhibited by each of our subjects were significantly influenced by what kind of daily necessaries subjects carry. This research provides novel findings on human behavior in complex environments: in the case where subjects holding a handbag (a type of daily necessaries that stays next to one's body), they showed the tendency to be affected by the other subject and move more dynamically compared to the subject without anything or with other daily necessaries; in the case where subjects carrying a backpack (a type of daily necessaries on one's back) and looking at a smartphone, they also showed the tendency of being affected by others, but their motion is restricted compared to the subject without anything.