Robot Navigation and Canine Welfare: A Pilot Study Surfacing Challenges for Cross-Species Legibility and Proxy Validity in Animal-Machine Interaction

Abstract

Autonomous delivery robots increasingly share residential spaces with companion animals, yet navigation behavior is rarely designed with animal welfare in mind. This paper presents a pilot study evaluating a curve-out maneuver, a laterally arcing pass-by trajectory triggered at the dog's alert distance, proposed as a candidate welfare-informed navigation intervention grounded in canine social communication research and legible motion theory. Following a research through design approach, we developed and evaluated a first design iteration of the artifact in a naturalistic home environment with a companion dog. Contrary to our hypothesis, the curve-out produced a more acute stress response than the straight-line baseline. We argue that discontinuous execution limitation, the robot stopping and reorienting multiple times to approximate the arc, undermined legibility, which in itself became a stressor. The pilot surfaces the legibility of robot behavior to non-humans'eyes and proxy stimulus validity as structural challenges for AMI and repositions the design problem for future work.