In this paper, we compare a touch-based human-to-robot command scheme with traditional button commands in a series of human-robot collaborative assembly tasks. We find a mapping between command style and task outcome that depends on task complexity and is influenced by robot feel. In our direct touch-based scheme, the user commands the robot through direct physical contact by tapping and pushing the robot. With a small, compliant desktop robot and a simple, scripted, bolt insertion task, button commands performed slightly better than direct physical commands in quantitative task performance metrics and qualitative user preference. In a second study with a human-scale, stiffer robot arm, physical commands performed better than button commands in a more complex and less scripted bolt insertion task, which greatly outperformed using buttons in a cooperative positioning task. We conclude that commanding a robot through direct force-transmitting contact can decrease task completion time, aid in teamwork, and improve user experience in appropriately chosen tasks. We achieve our haptic commands using only robot position sensors, demonstrating that direct, intuitive physical command is an option for existing position-controlled industrial robots.

In this paper we provide empirical evidence that using humanlike gaze cues during human-robot handovers can improve the timing and perceived quality of the handover event. Handovers serve as the foundation of many human-robot tasks. Fluent, legible handover interactions require appropriate nonverbal cues to signal handover intent, location and timing. Inspired by observations of human-human handovers, we implemented gaze behaviors on a PR2 humanoid robot. The robot handed over water bottles to a total of 102 naïve subjects while varying its gaze behaviour: no gaze, gaze designed to elicit shared attention at the handover location, and the shared attention gaze complemented with a turn-taking cue. We compared subject perception of and reaction time to the robot-initiated handovers across the three gaze conditions. Results indicate that subjects reach for the offered object significantly earlier when a robot provides a shared attention gaze cue during a handover. We also observed a statistical trend of subjects preferring handovers with turn-taking gaze cues over the other conditions. Our work demonstrates that gaze can play a key role in improving user experience of human-robot handovers, and help make handovers fast and fluent.

New developments, innovations, and advancements in robotic technology are paving the way for intelligent robots to enable, support, and enhance the capabilities of human workers in manufacturing environments. We envision future industrial robot assistants that support workers in their tasks, advancing manufacturing quality and processes and increasing productivity. However, this requires new channels of fine-grained, fast and reliable communication. In this research we examined the communication required for human-robot collaboration in a vehicle door assembly scenario. We identified potential communicative gestures applicable to this scenario, implemented these gestures on a Barrett WAMTM1manipulator, and evaluated them in terms of human recognition rate and response time in a real-time interaction. Response time analysis reveals insights into the communicative structure of robot motions; namely, key short gesture segments include the bulk of the communicative information. These results will help us design more efficient and fluid task flow in human-robot interaction scenarios.