# A Survey on Socially Aware Robot Navigation: Taxonomy and Future Challenges

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.06922 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.06922/

## Key facts

- Cited by 39 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 12 Nov 2023.

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 39)

- [SocialNav: Training Human-Inspired Foundation Model for Socially-Aware Embodied Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.21135/) (2025)
- [From Cognition to Precognition: A Future-Aware Framework for Social Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.13244/) (2024)
- [SoNIC: Safe Social Navigation with Adaptive Conformal Inference and Constrained Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.17460/) (2024)
- [GSON: A Group-based Social Navigation Framework with Large Multimodal Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.18084/) (2024)
- [Socially Integrated Navigation: A Social Acting Robot with Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.09793/) (2024)
- [ViLAM: Distilling Vision-Language Reasoning into Attention Maps for Social Robot Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.09820/) (2025)
- [Arena 4.0: A Comprehensive ROS2 Development and Benchmarking Platform for Human-centric Navigation Using Generative-Model-based Environment Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.12471/) (2024)
- [Semi-Supervised Unconstrained Head Pose Estimation in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.02544/) (2024)
- [Recent Advances in Multi-Agent Human Trajectory Prediction: A Comprehensive Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.14831/) (2025)
- [Socially aware navigation for mobile robots: a survey on deep reinforcement learning approaches](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.00049/) (2025)
- [EvoNav: Evolutionary Reward Function Design for Robot Navigation with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.11859/) (2026)
- [Socially Pertinent Robots in Gerontological Healthcare](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.07560/) (2024)
- [Hyp2Nav: Hyperbolic Planning and Curiosity for Crowd Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.13567/) (2024)
- [In Search of a Lost Metric: Human Empowerment as a Pillar of Socially Conscious Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.01539/) (2025)
- [EmoBipedNav: Emotion-aware Social Navigation for Bipedal Robots with Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12538/) (2025)
- [TRANS: Terrain-aware Reinforcement Learning for Agile Navigation of Quadruped Robots under Social Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.12724/) (2026)
- [Guessing human intentions to avoid dangerous situations in caregiving robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.16291/) (2024)
- [Towards Human-Centered Construction Robotics: A Reinforcement Learning-Driven Companion Robot for Contextually Assisting Carpentry Workers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.19060/) (2024)
- [RUMOR: Reinforcement learning for Understanding a Model of the Real World for Navigation in Dynamic Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16672/) (2024)
- [Human-Robot Collaborative Minimum Time Search through Sub-priors in Ant Colony Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.00517/) (2024)
- [Observer-Aware Probabilistic Planning Under Partial Observability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.10568/) (2025)
- [A Comparative Study of Human Motion Models in Reinforcement Learning Algorithms for Social Robot Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.15127/) (2025)
- [Perspective-Shifted Neuro-Symbolic World Models: A Framework for Socially-Aware Robot Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.20425/) (2025)
- [A Lightweight Crowd Model for Robot Social Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.19595/) (2025)
- [Learning to Navigate Socially Through Proactive Risk Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.07871/) (2025)
- [A New Trajectory-Oriented Approach to Enhancing Comprehensive Crowd Navigation Performance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.06608/) (2025)
- [Stereo4DWalker: Learning 4D-aware Embodied Urban Navigation from Internet Stereo Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.10956/) (2025)
- [Deep Learning Perspective of Scene Understanding in Autonomous Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.14020/) (2025)
- [UrbanHuRo: A Two-Layer Human-Robot Collaboration Framework for the Joint Optimization of Heterogeneous Urban Services](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.03701/) (2026)
- [Act on What You See: Unlocking Safe Social Navigation in Vision-Language-Action Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.10495/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Socially aware robot navigation is gaining popularity with the increase in delivery and assistive robots. The research is further fueled by a need for socially aware navigation skills in autonomous vehicles to move safely and appropriately in spaces shared with humans. Although most of these are ground robots, drones are also entering the field. In this paper, we present a literature survey of the works on socially aware robot navigation in the past 10 years. We propose four different faceted taxonomies to navigate the literature and examine the field from four different perspectives. Through the taxonomic review, we discuss the current research directions and the extending scope of applications in various domains. Further, we put forward a list of current research opportunities and present a discussion on possible future challenges that are likely to emerge in the field.