{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,12]],"date-time":"2026-06-12T03:22:12Z","timestamp":1781234532420,"version":"3.54.1"},"reference-count":35,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"4","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2025,11,13]],"date-time":"2025-11-13T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1762992000000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"Interdisciplinary Research Center for Smart Mobility and Logistics, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["MAKE"],"abstract":"<jats:p>The rapid growth of technology has introduced robots into daily life, necessitating navigation frameworks that enable safe, human-friendly movement while accounting for social aspects. Such methods must also scale to situations with multiple humans and robots moving simultaneously. Recent advances in Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) have enabled policies that incorporate these norms into navigation. This work presents a socially aware navigation framework for mobile robots operating in environments shared with humans and other robots. The approach, based on single-agent DRL, models all interaction types between the ego robot, humans, and other robots. Training uses a reward function balancing task completion, collision avoidance, and maintaining comfortable distances from humans. An attention mechanism enables the framework to extract knowledge about the relative importance of surrounding agents, guiding safer and more efficient navigation. Our approach is tested in both dynamic and static obstacle environments. To improve training efficiency and promote socially appropriate behaviors, Imitation Learning is employed. Comparative evaluations with state-of-the-art methods highlight the advantages of our approach, especially in enhancing safety by reducing collisions and preserving comfort distances. Results confirm the effectiveness of our learned policy and its ability to extract socially relevant knowledge in human\u2013robot environments where social compliance is essential for deployment.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/make7040145","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,11,14]],"date-time":"2025-11-14T09:06:36Z","timestamp":1763111196000},"page":"145","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":2,"title":["Learning to Navigate in Mixed Human\u2013Robot Crowds via an Attention-Driven Deep Reinforcement Learning Framework"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"7","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0006-1441-7116","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Ibrahim K.","family":"Kabir","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Control and Instrumentation Department, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM), Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia"},{"name":"Interdisciplinary Research Center for Smart Mobility and Logistics, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM), Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-8909-8937","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Muhammad F.","family":"Mysorewala","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Control and Instrumentation Department, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM), Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia"},{"name":"Interdisciplinary Research Center for Smart Mobility and Logistics, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM), Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia"},{"name":"Interdisciplinary Research Center for Intelligent Manufacturing and Robotics, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM), Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yahya I.","family":"Osais","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Information & Computer Science Department, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM), Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia"},{"name":"Interdisciplinary Research Center for Intelligent Secure Systems, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM), Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia"},{"name":"Interdisciplinary Research Center for Communication Systems and Sensing, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM), Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-7789-428X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Ali","family":"Nasir","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Control and Instrumentation Department, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM), Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia"},{"name":"Interdisciplinary Research Center for Intelligent Manufacturing and Robotics, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM), Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,11,13]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","first-page":"489","article-title":"Progress on robotics in hospitality and tourism: A review of the literature","volume":"10","author":"Ivanov","year":"2019","journal-title":"J. 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