Metrics vs Surveys: Can Quantitative Measures Replace Human Surveys in Social Robot Navigation? A Correlation Analysis

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Trepella, Stefano, Martini, Mauro, Pérez-Higueras, Noé, Ostuni, Andrea, Caballero, Fernando, Merino, Luis, Chiaberge, Marcello
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866916987338227712
author Trepella, Stefano
Martini, Mauro
Pérez-Higueras, Noé
Ostuni, Andrea
Caballero, Fernando
Merino, Luis
Chiaberge, Marcello
author_facet Trepella, Stefano
Martini, Mauro
Pérez-Higueras, Noé
Ostuni, Andrea
Caballero, Fernando
Merino, Luis
Chiaberge, Marcello
contents Social, also called human-aware, navigation is a key challenge for the integration of mobile robots into human environments. The evaluation of such systems is complex, as factors such as comfort, safety, and legibility must be considered. Human-centered assessments, typically conducted through surveys, provide reliable insights but are costly, resource-intensive, and difficult to reproduce or compare across systems. Alternatively, numerical social navigation metrics are easy to compute and facilitate comparisons, yet the community lacks consensus on a standard set of metrics. This work explores the relationship between numerical metrics and human-centered evaluations to identify potential correlations. If specific quantitative measures align with human perceptions, they could serve as standardized evaluation tools, reducing the dependency on surveys. Our results indicate that while current metrics capture some aspects of robot navigation behavior, important subjective factors remain insufficiently represented and new metrics are necessary.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_02941
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Metrics vs Surveys: Can Quantitative Measures Replace Human Surveys in Social Robot Navigation? A Correlation Analysis
Trepella, Stefano
Martini, Mauro
Pérez-Higueras, Noé
Ostuni, Andrea
Caballero, Fernando
Merino, Luis
Chiaberge, Marcello
Robotics
Social, also called human-aware, navigation is a key challenge for the integration of mobile robots into human environments. The evaluation of such systems is complex, as factors such as comfort, safety, and legibility must be considered. Human-centered assessments, typically conducted through surveys, provide reliable insights but are costly, resource-intensive, and difficult to reproduce or compare across systems. Alternatively, numerical social navigation metrics are easy to compute and facilitate comparisons, yet the community lacks consensus on a standard set of metrics. This work explores the relationship between numerical metrics and human-centered evaluations to identify potential correlations. If specific quantitative measures align with human perceptions, they could serve as standardized evaluation tools, reducing the dependency on surveys. Our results indicate that while current metrics capture some aspects of robot navigation behavior, important subjective factors remain insufficiently represented and new metrics are necessary.
title Metrics vs Surveys: Can Quantitative Measures Replace Human Surveys in Social Robot Navigation? A Correlation Analysis
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.02941