Publication
SensPS: Sensing Personal Space Comfortable Distance between Human-Human Using Multimodal Sensors
Ko Watanabe; Nico Förster; Shoya Ishimaru (Hrsg.)
Human Computer Interaction International Conferences (HCII-2025), Human Computer Interaction International Conferences 2025, located at HCII-2025, June 22-27, Gothia Towers Hotel and Swedish Exhibition & Congress Centre, Gothenburg, Sweden, Springer, 6/2025.
Abstract
Personal space, also known as peripersonal space, is crucial in human social interaction, influencing comfort, communication, and social stress. Estimating and respecting personal space is essential for enhancing human-computer interaction (HCI) and smart environments. Personal space preferences vary due to individual traits, cultural background, and contextual factors. Advanced multimodal sensing technologies, including eye-tracking and wristband sensors, offer opportunities to develop adaptive systems that dynamically adjust to user comfort levels. Integrating physiological and behavioral data enables a deeper understanding of spatial interactions. This study aims to develop a sensor based model to estimate comfortable personal space and identify key features influencing spatial preferences. Here we show that multimodal sensors, particularly eye-tracking and physiological wristband data, can effectively predict personal space preferences, with eye-tracking data playing a more significant role. Our experimental study involving controlled human interactions demonstrates, that the Transformer model achieves the highest predictive accuracy (F1 score: 0.87) for estimating personal space. Eye-tracking features, such as gaze point and pupil diameter, emerge as the most significant predictors, while physiological signals from wristband sensors contribute marginally. These findings highlight the potential for AI-driven personalization of social space in adaptive environments. Our results suggest that multimodal sensing can be leveraged to develop intelligent systems that optimize spatial arrangements in workplaces, educational institutions, and public settings. Future work should explore larger datasets, real-world applications, and additional physiological markers to enhance model robustness