Proxemics and Permeability of the Pedestrian Group

The theory describes four physical zones (or territories) defined by growing distances around each person, as can be seen in Figure 3 (top left). With those hidden unwritten rules for spaces around a person, only socially close people are welcome within the intimate zone, while generally close people can enter the personal zone, followed by generally familiar people who are allowed in the social space. Otherwise, general public are only permitted within the public space. The concept of group proxemics has been investigated in literature with most attention being paid to detailing the classical proxemics theory. For instance, the authors of [14] explored proxemics and their impact on shape of group formation, the authors of [2] explored proxemics dispersion as average distances people maintain between each other as they walk in group, and in [18], [19] focus was given to studying the effect of proxemics on crowd and its traffic flow dynamics. Within robot-human interactions, the authors of [20]-[22] studied appropriate (safety, comfort, acceptability, etc) distance robots are expected to maintain from people (as individuals). It could be noticed that proxemics are structured around interactions between individuals and details are specified in terms of social relationships between them. In what follows, we explore the situation when an individual is part of a bigger and more complex social entity such as a group. We study the nature of such interactions and and explore associated proxemics.