Human acceptance in the Human-Robot Interaction scenario for last-mile goods delivery

Abstract

The introduction of robotic technology in an existing scenario must be analyzed from the point of view of all the human roles involved in that scenario. In the case of dealing with urban public space, the analysis must consider a large group of citizens who carry out different activities on it. The purpose of this article is to analyze the human roles and the human acceptance when the robotic technology is introduced in the last mile distribution of goods in urban areas. In this work, we start with the description of the Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) scenario for last mile goods delivery, we describe the human roles and we propose a set of relevant indicators to evaluate the human acceptance for this task. Finally, we evaluate the human acceptance through qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys. The study has been done for the peer end-users and bystanders human roles and around 100 people participated.