Comparison of Human-Drone Distancing Studies Across In-person and Online Modalities

Abstract

Human-robot proxemics behaviors can vary based on personal, robot, and environmental factors which, along with their deployment in public-facing interactions, calls for an in-depth exploration. This paper explores the impact of altitude and safety modifications of small unmanned aerial vehicle (sUAV) on users’ comfortable interaction distance. By leveraging interaction techniques from literature like video, sound, and simulations, we explore personal space interactions in online studies (N=376) with the sUAV and the Double telepresence robot. We then compare the findings with our in-person interaction data (N=47). While in-person interactions are the ultimate goal, online methods can be used to reduce resources, allow larger sample sizes, and may lead to a more comprehensive sampling of population than would be expected from in-person studies. The lessons learned from this work are applicable broadly within the social robotics community, even outside those who are interested in proxemics interactions, to conduct future crowd-sourced experiments. The various modalities provided similar trends when compared with data from in-person studies. While the distances may not have been precise compared to those measured in the real world, these experiments are useful to detect patterns in human-robot interactions, and to conduct formative studies before committing resources to in-person testing.