Publication

User-friendly smartphone interface to share knowledge in human-robot collaborative search tasks

Conference Article

Conference

IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN)

Edition

30th

Pages

913-918

Doc link

https://doi.org/10.1109/RO-MAN50785.2021.9515379

File

Download the digital copy of the doc pdf document

Abstract

Long-distance human-robot collaborative tasks require robust forms of knowledge-sharing among agents in order to optimize the performance of the task. In this paper, we propose to take advantage of the proliferation of mobile phones to use them as a reliable low-cost communication interface, as opposed to the use of specific gadgets or speech and gesture recognition techniques that are highly prone to failure in the presence of noise or occlusions. Our interface is focused on search tasks, and it allows the user to share with the other agents real-time information such as their position, their intention or even what they would like the other agents to do. To test its acceptability, a user study was conducted with 20 volunteers in a human-human scenario. A second round of experiments with other 30 volunteers was conducted to test different ways to encourage user interaction with our interface. Finally, real-life experiments were also conducted with a robot to apply skills learned to the desired scenario. We found a statistically significant improvement in the amount of information exchanged between agents.

Categories

automation.

Author keywords

human-robot interaction, human-robot collaboration, smartphone interface, mobile robotics

Scientific reference

J.E. Domínguez, I.J. Torres, A. Garrell Zulueta and A. Sanfeliu. User-friendly smartphone interface to share knowledge in human-robot collaborative search tasks, 30th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, 2021, Vancouver, Canada, pp. 913-918.