What does it cost robots to let people go first at a shared lift or narrow pavement?
research/society-commons
What does it cost robots to let people go first at a shared lift or narrow pavement? At load 0.9, deference cuts people's wait 6.5× (4.60 to 0.71) and raises robots' by 2.6 units; total waiting cost is conserved, so it pays only if a person's wait costs more than a robot's, and a lone defector waits far less (2.08 vs 7.65). Queueing model within 2.7% of closed forms.
What it found
People and robots share a one-at-a-time crossing. At load 0.9, robots that always let waiting people go first cut people’s mean wait from 4.60 to 0.71 time units and raise the robots’ from 4.61 to 7.21; the total waiting cost is the same for every share of deferential robots (4.14–4.15), so deference moves waiting rather than removing it, and pays exactly when a person’s wait costs more than a robot’s. A lone selfish robot waits 2.08 against 7.65 for deferential ones (the dilemma). Under overload (load 1.2) half the robots deferring costs them 10.5% of their crossings and gives people 20% more. Simulation within 2.7% of M/G/1 closed forms. Stylised: one server, Poisson arrivals, fixed crossing times.
A figure from its own output
Paper, code and results
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Produced with AI assistance (Claude). Results are from the code in this repository and are simulated or stylised unless the abstract says otherwise; nothing here implies affiliation with or endorsement by any lab, researcher or company cited. MIT licensed.