Social Force-Based Proxemics for Mutual and Comfortable Navigation of an Intelligent Wheelchair

Kalenberg M, Heine M, Ghanate S, Hofmann C, Walter J, Franke J, Fürst J (2026)

Publication Type: Conference contribution

Publication year: 2026

Publisher: IEEE Computer Society

Pages Range: 1-6

Conference Proceedings Title: Proceedings of IEEE Workshop on Advanced Robotics and its Social Impacts, ARSO

Event location: Vienna

ISBN: 9798331564452

DOI: 10.1109/ARSO68304.2026.11536118

Abstract

Intelligent wheelchairs for passenger transport are gaining prominence in the healthcare and transportation sectors due to demographic shifts. While social navigation among pedestrians is a well-studied problem in mobile robotics, existing approaches largely ignore the need to balance the priorities of passengers and nearby pedestrians, often disadvantaging the passenger. In this paper, we propose a social navigation layer based on the Social Force Model (SFM) to enable mutual navigation between pedestrians and passengers, thereby improving passenger comfort. We first show that current proxemics-based social navigation layers disadvantage passengers by prioritizing pedestrian comfort. To address this problem, our approach predicts pedestrian motion using the SFM while incorporating the passenger’s social forces and adapts proxemics along the predicted trajectories. We implement the proposed method as a costmap layer, enabling deployment across a wide range of navigation setups. Simulation and real-world experiments demonstrate that our approach enables mutual navigation between pedestrians and passengers, while virtual reality user studies show a significant improvement in passenger comfort.

Authors with CRIS profile

How to cite

APA:

Kalenberg, M., Heine, M., Ghanate, S., Hofmann, C., Walter, J., Franke, J., & Fürst, J. (2026). Social Force-Based Proxemics for Mutual and Comfortable Navigation of an Intelligent Wheelchair. In Proceedings of IEEE Workshop on Advanced Robotics and its Social Impacts, ARSO (pp. 1-6). Vienna, AT: IEEE Computer Society.

MLA:

Kalenberg, Matthias, et al. "Social Force-Based Proxemics for Mutual and Comfortable Navigation of an Intelligent Wheelchair." Proceedings of the 2026 IEEE International Conference on Advanced Robotics and its Social Impacts, ARSO 2026, Vienna IEEE Computer Society, 2026. 1-6.

BibTeX: Download