Learning to Communicate Functional States with Nonverbal Expressions for Improved Human-Robot Collaboration

Collaborative robots must effectively communicate their internal state to humans to enable a smooth interaction. Nonverbal communication is widely used to communicate information during human-robot interaction, however, such methods may also be misunderstood, leading to communication errors. In this work, we explore modulating the acoustic parameter values (pitch bend, beats per minute, beats per loop) of nonverbal auditory expressions to convey functional robot states (accomplished, progressing, stuck). We propose a reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm based on noisy human feedback to produce accurately interpreted nonverbal auditory expressions. The proposed approach was evaluated through a user study with 24 participants. The results demonstrate that: 1. Our proposed RL-based approach is able to learn suitable acoustic parameter values which improve the users' ability to correctly identify the state of the robot. 2. Algorithm initialization informed by previous user data can be used to significantly speed up the learning process. 3. The method used for algorithm initialization strongly influences whether participants converge to similar sounds for each robot state. 4. Modulation of pitch bend has the largest influence on user association between sounds and robotic states.

How Can Everyday Users Efficiently Teach Robots by Demonstrations?

Learning from Demonstration (LfD) is a framework that allows lay users to easily program robots. However, the efficiency of robot learning and the robot's ability to generalize to task variations hinges upon the quality and quantity of the provided demonstrations. Our objective is to guide human teachers to furnish more effective demonstrations, thus facilitating efficient robot learning. To achieve this, we propose to use a measure of uncertainty, namely task-related information entropy, as a criterion for suggesting informative demonstration examples to human teachers to improve their teaching skills. In a conducted experiment (N=24), an augmented reality (AR)-based guidance system was employed to train novice users to produce additional demonstrations from areas with the highest entropy within the workspace. These novice users were trained for a few trials to teach the robot a generalizable task using a limited number of demonstrations. Subsequently, the users' performance after training was assessed first on the same task (retention) and then on a novel task (transfer) without guidance. The results indicated a substantial improvement in robot learning efficiency from the teacher's demonstrations, with an improvement of up to 198% observed on the novel task. Furthermore, the proposed approach was compared to a state-of-the-art heuristic rule and found to improve robot learning efficiency by 210% compared to the heuristic rule.

Comparing Subjective Perceptions of Robot-to-Human Handover Trajectories

Robots must move legibly around people for safety reasons, especially for tasks where physical contact is possible. One such task is handovers, which requires implicit communication on where and when physical contact (object transfer) occurs. In this work, we study whether the trajectory model used by a robot during the reaching phase affects the subjective perceptions of receivers for robot-to-human handovers. We conducted a user study where 32 participants were handed over three objects with four trajectory models: three were versions of a minimum jerk trajectory, and one was an ellipse-fitting-based trajectory. The start position of the handover was fixed for all trajectories, and the end position was allowed to vary randomly around a fixed position by $\pm$3 cm in all axis. The user study found no significant differences among the handover trajectories in survey questions relating to safety, predictability, naturalness, and other subjective metrics. While these results seemingly reject the hypothesis that the trajectory affects human perceptions of a handover, it prompts future research to investigate the effect of other variables, such as robot speed, object transfer position, object orientation at the transfer point, and explicit communication signals such as gaze and speech.

Autonomous social robot navigation in unknown urban environments using semantic segmentation

For autonomous robots navigating in urban environments, it is important for the robot to stay on the designated path of travel (i.e., the footpath), and avoid areas such as grass and garden beds, for safety and social conformity considerations. This paper presents an autonomous navigation approach for unknown urban environments that combines the use of semantic segmentation and LiDAR data. The proposed approach uses the segmented image mask to create a 3D obstacle map of the environment, from which, the boundaries of the footpath is computed. Compared to existing methods, our approach does not require a pre-built map and provides a 3D understanding of the safe region of travel, enabling the robot to plan any path through the footpath. Experiments comparing our method with two alternatives using only LiDAR or only semantic segmentation show that overall our proposed approach performs significantly better with greater than 91% success rate outdoors, and greater than 66% indoors. Our method enabled the robot to remain on the safe path of travel at all times, and reduced the number of collisions.

Design and Implementation of a Human-Robot Joint Action Framework using Augmented Reality and Eye Gaze

When humans work together to complete a joint task, each person builds an internal model of the situation and how it will evolve. Efficient collaboration is dependent on how these individual models overlap to form a shared mental model among team members, which is important for collaborative processes in human-robot teams. The development and maintenance of an accurate shared mental model requires bidirectional communication of individual intent and the ability to interpret the intent of other team members. To enable effective human-robot collaboration, this paper presents a design and implementation of a novel joint action framework in human-robot team collaboration, utilizing augmented reality (AR) technology and user eye gaze to enable bidirectional communication of intent. We tested our new framework through a user study with 37 participants, and found that our system improves task efficiency, trust, as well as task fluency. Therefore, using AR and eye gaze to enable bidirectional communication is a promising mean to improve core components that influence collaboration between humans and robots.

AR Point&Click: An Interface for Setting Robot Navigation Goals

This paper considers the problem of designating navigation goal locations for interactive mobile robots. We propose a point-and-click interface, implemented with an Augmented Reality (AR) headset. The cameras on the AR headset are used to detect natural pointing gestures performed by the user. The selected goal is visualized through the AR headset, allowing the users to adjust the goal location if desired. We conduct a user study in which participants set consecutive navigation goals for the robot using three different interfaces: AR Point & Click, Person Following and Tablet (birdeye map view). Results show that the proposed AR Point&Click interface improved the perceived accuracy, efficiency and reduced mental load compared to the baseline tablet interface, and it performed on-par to the Person Following method. These results show that the AR Point\&Click is a feasible interaction model for setting navigation goals.

On-The-Go Robot-to-Human Handovers with a Mobile Manipulator

Existing approaches to direct robot-to-human handovers are typically implemented on fixed-base robot arms, or on mobile manipulators that come to a full stop before performing the handover. We propose "on-the-go" handovers which permit a moving mobile manipulator to hand over an object to a human without stopping. The on-the-go handover motion is generated with a reactive controller that allows simultaneous control of the base and the arm. In a user study, human receivers subjectively assessed on-the-go handovers to be more efficient, predictable, natural, better timed and safer than handovers that implemented a "stop-and-deliver" behavior.

Design and Evaluation of an Augmented Reality Head-Mounted Display Interface for Human Robot Teams Collaborating in Physically Shared Manufacturing Tasks

We provide an experimental evaluation of a wearable augmented reality (AR) system we have developed for human-robot teams working on tasks requiring collaboration in shared physical workspace. Recent advances in AR technology have facilitated the development of more intuitive user interfaces for many human-robot interaction applications. While it has been anticipated that AR can provided a more intuitive interface to robot assistants helping human workers in various manufacturing scenarios, existing studies in robotics have been largely limited to teleoperation and programming. Industry 5.0 envisions cooperation between human and robot working in teams. Indeed, there exist many industrial task that can benefit from human-robot collaboration. A prime example is high-value composite manufacturing. Working with our industry partner towards this example application, we evaluated our AR interface design for shared physical workspace collaboration in human-robot teams. We conducted a multi-dimensional analysis of our interface using establish metrics. Results from our user study (n=26) show that subjectively, the AR interface feels more novel and a standard joystick interface feels more dependable to users. However, the AR interface was found to reduce physical demand and task completion time, while increasing robot utilization. Furthermore, user's freedom of choice to collaborate with the robot may also affect the perceived usability of the system.

Metrics for Evaluating Social Conformity of Crowd Navigation Algorithms

Recent protocols and metrics for training and evaluating autonomous robot navigation through crowds are inconsistent due to diversified definitions of "social behavior". This makes it difficult, if not impossible, to effectively compare published navigation algorithms. Furthermore, with the lack of a good evaluation protocol, resulting algorithms may fail to generalize, due to lack of diversity in training. To address these gaps, this paper facilitates a more comprehensive evaluation and objective comparison of crowd navigation algorithms by proposing a consistent set of metrics that accounts for both efficiency and social conformity, and a systematic protocol comprising multiple crowd navigation scenarios of varying complexity for evaluation. We tested four state-of-the-art algorithms under this protocol. Results revealed that some state-of-the-art algorithms have much challenge in generalizing, and using our protocol for training, we were able to improve the algorithm's performance. We demonstrate that the set of proposed metrics provides more insight and effectively differentiates the performance of these algorithms with respect to efficiency and social conformity.

An Experimental Validation and Comparison of Reaching Motion Models for Unconstrained Handovers: Towards Generating Humanlike Motions for Human-Robot Handovers

The Minimum Jerk motion model has long been cited in literature for human point-to-point reaching motions in single-person tasks. While it has been demonstrated that applying minimum-jerk-like trajectories to robot reaching motions in the joint action task of human-robot handovers allows a robot giver to be perceived as more careful, safe, and skilled, it has not been verified whether human reaching motions in handovers follow the Minimum Jerk model. To experimentally test and verify motion models for human reaches in handovers, we examined human reaching motions in unconstrained handovers (where the person is allowed to move their whole body) and fitted against 1) the Minimum Jerk model, 2) its variation, the Decoupled Minimum Jerk model, and 3) the recently proposed Elliptical (Conic) model. Results showed that Conic model fits unconstrained human handover reaching motions best. Furthermore, we discovered that unlike constrained, single-person reaching motions, which have been found to be elliptical, there is a split between elliptical and hyperbolic conic types. We expect our results will help guide generation of more humanlike reaching motions for human-robot handover tasks.