Towards smooth mobile robot deployments in dynamic human environments

Recently, there has been great interest in deploying autonomous mobile robots in airports, malls, and hospitals to complete a range of tasks such as delivery, cleaning, and patrolling. The rich context of these environments gives rise to highly unstructured motion that is challenging for robots to anticipate and adapt to. This results in uncomfortable and unsafe human–robot encounters, poor robot performance, and even catastrophic failures that hinder robot acceptance. Such observations have motivated my work on social robot navigation, the problem of enabling robots to navigate in human environments while accounting for human safety and comfort. In this article, I highlight prior work on expanding the classical autonomy stack with mathematical models and algorithms designed to contribute towards smoother mobile robot deployments in complex environments.