# Socially aware navigation for mobile robots: a survey on deep reinforcement learning approaches

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.00049 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.00049/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in RL for robot navigation and UAV control, one of 15 directions in Deep reinforcement learning methods.
- Builds on 68 of its 170 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Nov 2025.

## Placed in

- Deep reinforcement learning methods / [RL for robot navigation and UAV control](https://mlsanity.com/deeprl/rl-for-robot-navigation-and-uav-control/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 68)

- [Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06347/) (2017)
- [Continuous control with deep reinforcement learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1509.02971/) (2015)
- [Addressing Function Approximation Error in Actor-Critic Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.09477/) (2018)
- [Empirical Evaluation of Gated Recurrent Neural Networks on Sequence Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.3555/) (2014)
- [Asynchronous Methods for Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.01783/) (2016)
- [OpenAI Gym](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.01540/) (2016)
- [Soft Actor-Critic Algorithms and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.05905/) (2018)
- [Deep Reinforcement Learning: An Overview](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1701.07274/) (2017)
- [Reinforcement learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.10369/) (2024)
- [Crowd-Robot Interaction: Crowd-aware Robot Navigation with Attention-based Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.08835/) (2018)
- [iGibson 1.0: a Simulation Environment for Interactive Tasks in Large Realistic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.02924/) (2020)
- [Making Sense of Vision and Touch: Self-Supervised Learning of Multimodal Representations for Contact-Rich Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.10191/) (2018)
- [Socially Aware Motion Planning with Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.08862/) (2017)
- [Socially Compliant Navigation Dataset (SCAND): A Large-Scale Dataset of Demonstrations for Social Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.15041/) (2022)
- [Motion Planning Among Dynamic, Decision-Making Agents with Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.01956/) (2018)
- [Core Challenges of Social Robot Navigation: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.05668/) (2021)
- [Principles and Guidelines for Evaluating Social Robot Navigation Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.16740/) (2023)
- [Intention Aware Robot Crowd Navigation with Attention-Based Interaction Graph](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.01821/) (2022)
- [Socially Compliant Navigation through Raw Depth Inputs with Generative Adversarial Imitation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.02543/) (2017)
- [Relational Graph Learning for Crowd Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.13165/) (2019)
- [From Perception to Decision: A Data-driven Approach to End-to-end Motion Planning for Autonomous Ground Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.07910/) (2016)
- [Decentralized Structural-RNN for Robot Crowd Navigation with Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.04820/) (2020)
- [A Survey on Socially Aware Robot Navigation: Taxonomy and Future Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.06922/) (2023)
- [TH"OR: Human-Robot Navigation Data Collection and Accurate Motion Trajectories Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.04403/) (2019)
- [Robot Navigation in Crowds by Graph Convolutional Networks with Attention Learned from Human Gaze](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.10400/) (2019)
- [Robot Navigation in Constrained Pedestrian Environments using Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.08600/) (2020)
- [Deep Attention Recurrent Q-Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.01693/) (2015)
- [A Survey on Human-aware Robot Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.11650/) (2021)
- [Multi-Agent Dynamic Relational Reasoning for Social Robot Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.12275/) (2024)
- [Multi-Robot Cooperative Socially-Aware Navigation Using Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.15234/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Incremental Residual Reinforcement Learning Toward Real-World Learning for Social Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.07945/) (2026)
- [Disturbance-Aware Aerial Robotics for Ethical Wildlife Monitoring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.08249/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Socially aware navigation is a fast-evolving research area in robotics that enables robots to move within human environments while adhering to the implicit human social norms. The advent of Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) has accelerated the development of navigation policies that enable robots to incorporate these social conventions while effectively reaching their objectives. This survey offers a comprehensive overview of DRL-based approaches to socially aware navigation, highlighting key aspects such as proxemics, human comfort, naturalness, trajectory and intention prediction, which enhance robot interaction in human environments. This work critically analyzes the integration of value-based, policy-based, and actor-critic reinforcement learning algorithms alongside neural network architectures, such as feedforward, recurrent, convolutional, graph, and transformer networks, for enhancing agent learning and representation in socially aware navigation. Furthermore, we examine crucial evaluation mechanisms, including metrics, benchmark datasets, simulation environments, and the persistent challenges of sim-to-real transfer. Our comparative analysis of the literature reveals that while DRL significantly improves safety, and human acceptance over traditional approaches, the field still faces setback due to non-uniform evaluation mechanisms, absence of standardized social metrics, computational burdens that limit scalability, and difficulty in transferring simulation to real robotic hardware applications. We assert that future progress will depend on hybrid approaches that leverage the strengths of multiple approaches and producing benchmarks that balance technical efficiency with human-centered evaluation.