Directly controlling robot motion through human–robot interaction enables the integration of human expertise into robot control. However, this requires efficient interaction methods. While previous work has shown that hand gestures offer potential for natural control, the lack of haptic feedback remains a key challenge. One solution is partial automation, in which the contact force is autonomously controlled. We implemented force automation enhanced gesture control, as well as the state-of-the-art baseline of hand-guiding, to systematically investigate hand gesture interaction for robot control. A user study (n=28) was conducted to investigate the efficiency and workload of these interaction concepts. As the interaction method efficiency may depend on task demands, two tasks with different precision requirements were evaluated in the context of robotic ultrasound. The results indicate that force automation significantly reduces perceived workload and task duration when using hand gestures. Moreover, gesture-based interaction can match the efficiency of hand-guiding for broad tasks and even outperform it in precise tasks. These findings highlight the potential of gesture-based interaction for robot control, particularly when the absence of haptic feedback is compensated by partial automation.

Within each hospital, medical equipment of diverse manufacturers is used. Due to strong competition, a large variety in self diagnosis functions and communication interfaces for technical equipment data have to be noticed. There is no common service interface available. This situation limits the capabilities of in-house maintenance personnel as well as the efficiency of external service providers. This paper shortly presents a concept of a manufacture independent architecture for medical equipment service management and a more detailed introduction to an approach for the integration of non-Web Service (legacy) enabled devices and sources of service related information.