In this paper is described the current work towards the design of a shopping assistant robot system. This system will allow users to keep control of what they are buying; the robot will help the customer by handling its shopping list, carrying with all the products, and serving as a companion. In this work is also shown the acceptability studies for this kind of robot.

As a part of the final goal of introducing robots in the human environment, it also comes the problem of the close interaction between these two beings. Close cooperative activities illustrate well this problem and rises new challenges to solve.

Robots' interaction with humans raises new issues for geometrical reasoning where the humans must be taken explicitly into account. We claim that a human-aware motion system must not only elaborate safe robot motions, but also synthesize good, socially acceptable and legible movement. This paper focuses on a manipulation planner and a placement mechanism that take explicitly into account its human partners by reasoning about their accessibility, their vision field and their preferences. This planner is part of a human-aware motion and manipulation planning and control system that we aim to develop in order to achieve motion and manipulation tasks in presence or in synergy with humans.

Robot navigation in the presence of humans raises new issues for motion planning and control when the humans must be taken explicitly into account. We claim that a human aware motion planner (HAMP) must not only provide safe robot paths, but also synthesize good, socially acceptable and legible paths. This paper focuses on a motion planner that takes explicitly into account its human partners by reasoning about their accessibility, their vision field and their preferences in terms of relative human-robot placement and motions in realistic environments. This planner is part of a human-aware motion and manipulation planning and control system that we aim to develop in order to achieve motion and manipulation tasks in the presence or in synergy with humans.

The presence of humans should be explicitly taken into account in all steps of robot's design and particularly for robot motion. The robot should reason about human partner's accessibility, his vision field and potential shared motions and behave as a social being by respecting social rules and protocols. This paper describes the algorithms and results of a navigation planner that takes into account the human presence explicitly. This planner is part of a human-aware motion and manipulation planning and control system that we aim to develop in order to achieve motion and manipulation tasks in presence and/or in synergy with human

The presence of humans in the robot environment brings new challenges to the robotic research. From low level functions to high level planners, clearly the human has to be taken into account in all the layers of the robot control system. Indeed, the robot has to behave socially in order to interact friendly with its human partners. This paper describes the development of several components (human detection and tracking, planning and supervision) that take into account humans explicitly with some preliminary results of their integration.