Don’t stand so close to me: users’ attitudinal and behavioral responses to personal space invasion by a robot

When in a human environment, one might expect that a social robot would act according to the social norms people expect of each other. When someone does not adhere to a prevalent social norm, people usually feel threatened and disturbed. Thus, insight is needed into what is perceived as socially normative behavior for robots. We conducted an experiment in which an agent approached a participant in order to determine the effect of personal space invasion. We manipulated the agent-type (human/robot) and the approach speed (slow/fast) of the agent towards the participant. Unexpectedly, our results show that the participants displayed more compensatory behavior in the robot condition than in the human condition. We consider this response toward personal space invasion as indication that people react in a similar way to robots as they do to humans, however with more intensity.