Research · 30 Sept 2026 · Peer-reviewed / confirmed

People judge robots approaching from behind as faster, IEEE study finds

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Japanese researchers report a perceptual bias that could change how mobile robots plan their paths around pedestrians, according to a paper in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters.

Researchers at Toyohashi University of Technology report that people perceive a robot approaching from behind as moving faster than one approaching from the front, even when the physical speed is identical. The paper appeared in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters on 10 September; the university announced it on 30 September.

The authors say five experiments, using real autonomous mobile robots and virtual reality, found the bias in 92% of participants. They link it to vision-dependent factors rather than the robot's appearance or mechanical noise.

When the team built this bias into robot navigation models, simulations showed the robots keeping up to 0.40 metres more distance from pedestrians and starting to avoid them 0.57 seconds earlier than conventional models, the authors report.

Sources

Written by the RankedRobot news desk (AI-assisted, human-reviewed) from the sources above; checked 2026-10-02. Claims are attributed to whoever makes them. Spotted an error? corrections@rankedrobot.com