[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-detail-85127-en":3,"doc-seo-85127-105":29,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":90},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",{"doc_id":7,"user_id":8,"nickname":9,"user_avatar":10,"doc_module":4,"category_id":11,"category_name":12,"doc_title":13,"doc_description":14,"doc_content":15,"file_id":16,"file_url":17,"file_type":18,"file_size":19,"view_count":20,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":21,"is_downloadable":21,"audit_status":21,"page_count":11,"language":22,"language_code":23,"site_id":24,"html_lang":23,"table_of_contents":25,"faqs":26,"seo_title":13,"seo_description":14,"update_tm":27,"read_time":28},85127,2336464648746,"Skyler","https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_276721f389ce27ea32af1340a28f341c",8,"Research & Report","The Individual Targeting Assumption: A Systematic Review of Proactive Robots in Human Group Settings","Proactive robots are increasingly deployed in public spaces, where people form cohesive social groups rather than interacting in isolation. A systematic review of 63 proactive human-robot interaction studies (2000–2025) identifies a recurring design tendency, the Individual-Targeting Assumption (ITA), in which robots treat co-present individuals as independent engagement targets. ITA appears in 60.3% of the corpus, while group-aware approaches emerge largely only after the robot is already embedded. The review highlights unresolved challenges for detecting and negotiating entry to pre-formed groups and proposes failure modes including misdetection and social ratification blindness.","The Individual-Targeting Assumption: A Systematic Review of Proactive Robots in Human Group Settings  \nTauhid Tanjim 1 , Tasmia Mayen 2 , Malte F. Jung 1 , and Susan R. Fussell 1  \narXiv :2607 .09734v 1 [ cs .HC] 2 Jul 2026  \nAbstract—Proactive robots are increasingly deployed in public environments where people are encountered not as isolated individuals but as members of cohesive social groups. Yet whether the prevailing design paradigm in proactive humanrobot interaction (HRI) accounts for the relational structure that defines a group as a social unit remains largely unexamined. Through a systematic review of 63 proactive HRI studies in group settings from 2000 to 2025, we identify a recurring tendency, the Individual-Targeting Assumption (ITA), in which robots treat co-present people as independent engagement targets. We find that ITA is present in 60.3% of the corpus, with group-aware approaches emerging almost entirely after the robot is already embedded in an ongoing interaction. Critically, how a robot should detect and negotiate entry into a pre-formed group before initiating contact remains unaddressed across the corpus. Three failure modes, engagement misdetection, social ratification blindness, and bystander neglect, emerge as recurring patterns when proactive robots interact with human groups. These findings reframe proactive HRI in group settings not asan extension of dyadic interaction but as a qualitatively distinct design problem, and they identify the robot’s approach to the group during the entry phase as a critical and understudied open challenge.  \nI. INTRODUCTION  \nThe use of robots is expanding and becoming increasingly common in the public sphere, including shopping malls [1], hospitals [2], [3], [4], and schools [5] . People are rarely isolated in such settings, as they arrive together, move together, and attend to their surroundings as socially coordinated units. Robot interactions with a human group are therefore more complex than one-on-one interactions; in these public places, simultaneous interaction with multiple people is not the exception but the norm [6] . Robots must thus be able to interpret, understand, navigate, and respond appropriately to human groups [7], whose social structures, shared attention, and interpersonal dynamics are further shaped by the robot’s presence [6] . Robots’ seamless interaction with human groups has become an increasingly important research priority [7] .  \nOn a spectrum, for the purpose of communication in HRI, robots can be broadly categorized from reactive to proactive [8] . Reactive robots respond to immediate user actions or environmental stimuli without planning or predicting future events [9] . On the contrary, proactive robots initiate interactions and anticipate humans’ needs [10], [8] .  \n*This work was not supported by any organization  \n1T. Tanjim, M. F. Jung, S. R. Fussell are with the Department of Information Science at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14850, USA {tt485, mfj28, [srf72](srf72}@cornell.edu)[}](srf72}@cornell.edu)[@cornell.edu](srf72}@cornell.edu)  \n2T. Mayen is with the School of Education, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70802, [USA](USA tmayen2@lsu.edu)[ tmayen2@lsu.edu](USA tmayen2@lsu.edu)  \nFig. 1: Two contrasting design paradigms in proactive HRI.(A) The Individual-targeting assumption (ITA): the robot models each co-present person as an independent engagement target. (B) The Group-aware approach (GAA): the robot treats co-present people as a cohesive social unit.  \nProactive HRI has emerged as a growing subfield within the past 15 years, driven by the desire for more human-robot interactions [10] . However, the vast majority of proactive HRI frameworks have been developed and evaluated in dyadic (one-to-one) settings, leaving the considerably more complex and common scenario of group interaction largely underexplored [10] . This paper addresses that gap through a systematic literature review of proactive robot behavio","cbCaiaA2blO23VXK","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaiaA2blO23VXK","pdf",614138,2,1,"English","en",105,"# Abstract\n# Introduction\n## Proactive vs. reactive robots\n## Prior work and research gap\n## Individual-Targeting Assumption (ITA) and Group-Aware Approach (GAA)","[{\"question\":\"What is the Individual-Targeting Assumption (ITA) in proactive human-robot interaction?\",\"answer\":\"ITA is the design tendency to model each person in a social group as an independent engagement target based only on individual signals, while ignoring the group’s relational structure.\"},{\"question\":\"How common is ITA across the reviewed literature?\",\"answer\":\"ITA is present in 60.3% of the reviewed corpus of 63 proactive HRI studies from 2000 to 2025.\"},{\"question\":\"What key challenge remains unaddressed when robots approach a pre-formed human group?\",\"answer\":\"How the robot should detect and negotiate entry into a group before initiating contact remains largely unaddressed across the 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is the Individual-Targeting Assumption (ITA) in proactive human-robot interaction?","Question",{"text":74,"@type":75},"ITA is the design tendency to model each person in a social group as an independent engagement target based only on individual signals, while ignoring the group’s relational structure.","Answer",{"name":77,"@type":72,"acceptedAnswer":78},"How common is ITA across the reviewed literature?",{"text":79,"@type":75},"ITA is present in 60.3% of the reviewed corpus of 63 proactive HRI studies from 2000 to 2025.",{"name":81,"@type":72,"acceptedAnswer":82},"What key challenge remains unaddressed when robots approach a pre-formed human group?",{"text":83,"@type":75},"How the robot should detect and negotiate entry into a group before initiating contact remains largely unaddressed across the 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