A natural behavior planner for multi-personal human-robot interaction within the simulated environment

In recent years, diffusion models have made remarkable success in generating realistic human motions. However, existing robot pose-learning approaches are largely focused on single-task and one-to-one scenarios, failing to account for multi-person social interactions. This limitation leads to rigid, context-insensitive behaviors that are ill-suited for real-world service scenarios. Consequently, current systems often produce robotic behaviors incapable of the fluidity and responsiveness expected in human-centered environments, a shortcoming underscored by affordance theory in robotics. To address this issue, we propose RoboActor, an innovative human-robot interaction behavior planner, draws inspiration from theatrical acting to orchestrate both deliberate and automatic actions. Our framework leverages Large Language Models (LLMs) to disentangle primary command-driven tasks from secondary, context-induced subtasks. By this means, RoboActor generates lifelike and socially appropriate behaviors in multi-person settings, significantly enhancing the naturalness, engagement, and realism of service robots in everyday social applications.

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Publication Details

Journal
Design and Artificial Intelligence
Published
2026-02-21
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.daai.2026.100062
Primary Topic
Social Robot Interaction and HRI
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00
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article

A natural behavior planner for multi-personal human-robot interaction within the simulated environment

Chunyang Yu, Chin-En Keith Soo, Yue Chen, Zhiyuan Zhou et al.
Design and Artificial Intelligence
Social Robot Interaction and HRI
article

A natural behavior planner for multi-personal human-robot interaction within the simulated environment

Chunyang Yu, Chin-En Keith Soo, Yue Chen, Zhiyuan Zhou, Pai Zheng, Haining Wang
article en

Abstract

In recent years, diffusion models have made remarkable success in generating realistic human motions. However, existing robot pose-learning approaches are largely focused on single-task and one-to-one scenarios, failing to account for multi-person social interactions. This limitation leads to rigid, context-insensitive behaviors that are ill-suited for real-world service scenarios. Consequently, current systems often produce robotic behaviors incapable of the fluidity and responsiveness expected in human-centered environments, a shortcoming underscored by affordance theory in robotics. To address this issue, we propose RoboActor, an innovative human-robot interaction behavior planner, draws inspiration from theatrical acting to orchestrate both deliberate and automatic actions. Our framework leverages Large Language Models (LLMs) to disentangle primary command-driven tasks from secondary, context-induced subtasks. By this means, RoboActor generates lifelike and socially appropriate behaviors in multi-person settings, significantly enhancing the naturalness, engagement, and realism of service robots in everyday social applications.

Design and Artificial IntelligenceVol. 2(1)
Tongji University (CN), Hong Kong Polytechnic University (HK), Hunan University (CN), China Academy of Art (CN), University of Waikato (NZ)
Reduced inequalities
Openalex Percentile: Top 54%
Social Robot Interaction and HRI
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