conformed to these zones, while 40% of them stood too close to
the robot, suggesting that they did not perceive the robot as a
social actor. They also found that participants’ personality
affected their distance from the robot; those who were more
proactive maintained a larger distance between themselves and the
robot. Takayama and Pantofaru [22] studied how a robot’s gaze
behavior and participant characteristics affected how comfortable
participants rated the distance the robot maintained with them.
Their results showed an interaction between participant gender
and the effect of robot’s gaze in participants’ distance from the
robot. Females were comfortable with a larger distance when the
robot looked toward their faces then they were when the robot
looked toward their legs, while males rated a smaller distance as
comfortable when the robot looked toward their faces then they
did when it looked at their legs. They also found that participants
who had prior experience with robots and those who owned pets
were more comfortable with smaller distances than others.