The Role of Drone’s Digital Facial Emotions and Gaze in Shaping Individuals’ Social Proxemics and Interpretation

The potential for drones to engage with people and find applications in social contexts is often constrained by their mechanical design, leading to concerns and negative associations that significantly affect people’s acceptance of drones in their personal space. In this study, we explore how social cues can impact the spatial dynamic of Human–Drone Interaction. Within a fully immersive virtual environment, 25 participants engaged with and navigated around a drone that communicated several facial emotions on a digital display such as Joy, Sadness and Anger, and enacted distinct “gaze” behaviors (i.e., following participants or averting its gaze). Our results indicate that participants responded to the drone’s gaze in a manner akin to what is reported during human interaction: maintaining a greater distance when the drone established eye contact and instinctively getting closer when it averted its gaze. A more granular analysis revealed that participants who lacked prior familiarity with drones or possessed neutral to positive attitudes toward them demonstrated a higher sensitivity to the drone’s digital facial emotions. This finding highlights the potential for leveraging social cues to facilitate the integration of drones into various human-centric environments and tailor their design and behavior to suit specific individuals and situations.