Yamauchi Tatsuto, Tamura Hideki, Minami Tetsuto, Nakauchi Shigeki
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Toyohashi University of Technology, Toyohashi, Aichi, Japan.
PLoS One. 2025 May 14;20(5):e0323632. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0323632. eCollection 2025.
The likelihood of pedestrians encountering autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) in smart cities is steadily increasing. While previous studies have explored human-to-human collision avoidance, the behavior of humans avoiding AMRs in direct, head-on scenarios remains underexplored. To address this gap, we conducted a psychophysical experiment to observe how humans react to an AMR approaching directly. The AMR was programmed to approach from various starting points, including a direct path toward participants, and their avoidance movements were recorded. Participants were instructed to evade by moving either right or left, with no strong preference for a particular direction observed. This suggests that avoidance direction is not strictly influenced by individual factors, such as adherence to regional traffic norms. Additionally, motion analysis revealed that participants instinctively twisted their waists in the direction of avoidance before evading. Further experiments assessed the role of waist rotation angle in influencing human comfort during AMR avoidance. The results indicated that early AMR avoidance improved participant comfort. Moreover, using an RGB camera allowed non-contact measuring without sensors, broadening the applicability of the technique. These findings suggest that waist rotation reliably predicts avoidance direction, and non-contact detection methods, such as RGB cameras, show substantial potential for broader applications. Further research will focus on improving the accuracy and robustness of these non-contact techniques.
在智慧城市中，行人遇到自主移动机器人（AMR）的可能性正在稳步增加。虽然先前的研究探讨了人与人之间的碰撞避免，但在直接正面场景中人类避开AMR的行为仍未得到充分研究。为了填补这一空白，我们进行了一项心理物理学实验，以观察人类对直接靠近的AMR的反应。AMR被编程为从不同的起始点靠近，包括朝着参与者的直接路径，并且记录了他们的回避动作。参与者被指示通过向左或向右移动来躲避，没有观察到对特定方向的强烈偏好。这表明回避方向并不严格受个体因素的影响，例如遵守区域交通规范。此外，运动分析表明，参与者在躲避之前会本能地朝着回避方向扭动腰部。进一步的实验评估了腰部旋转角度在AMR回避过程中对人类舒适度的影响。结果表明，早期的AMR回避提高了参与者的舒适度。此外，使用RGB摄像头可以在没有传感器的情况下进行非接触式测量，拓宽了该技术的适用性。这些发现表明，腰部旋转能够可靠地预测回避方向，并且像RGB摄像头这样的非接触式检测方法在更广泛的应用中显示出巨大潜力。进一步的研究将集中于提高这些非接触技术的准确性和鲁棒性。
