Close encounters: spatial distances between people and a robot of mechanistic appearance

This paper presents the results from two empirical exploratory studies of human-robot interaction in the context of an initial encounter with a robot of mechanistic appearance. The first study was carried out with groups of children, and the second with single adults. The analysis concentrates on the personal space zones and initial distances between robot and humans, the context of the encounters and the human's perception of the robot as a social being. We discuss the results of these observations and analyses, and also compare the child and adult data. The child groups showed a dominant response to prefer the 'social zone' distance, comparable to distances people adopt when talking to other humans. From the single adult studies a small majority preferred the 'personal zone', reserved for talking to friends. However, significant minorities deviate from this pattern. Implications for future work are discussed