A Study on the Effects of Cognitive Overloading and Distractions on Human Movement During Robot-Assisted Dressing

Abstract

For robots that can provide physical assistance, maintaining synchronicity of the robot and human movement is a precursor for interaction safety. Existing research on collaborative HRI does not consider how synchronicity can be affected if humans are subjected to cognitive overloading and distractions during close physical interaction. Cognitive neuroscience has shown that unexpected events during interactions not only affect action cognition but also human motor control Gentsch et al. (Cognition, 2016, 146, 81–89). If the robot is to safely adapt its trajectory to distracted human motion, quantitative changes in the human movement should be evaluated. The main contribution of this study is the analysis and quantification of disrupted human movement during a physical collaborative task that involves robot-assisted dressing. Quantifying disrupted movement is the first step in maintaining the synchronicity of the human-robot interaction. The human movement data collected from a series of experiments where participants are subjected to cognitive loading and distractions during the human-robot interaction, are projected in a 2-D latent space that efficiently represents the high-dimensionality and non-linearity of the data. The quantitative data analysis is supported by a qualitative study of user experience, using the NASA Task Load Index to measure perceived workload, and the PeRDITA questionnaire to represent the human psychological state during these interactions. In addition, we present an experimental methodology to collect interaction data in this type of human-robot collaboration that provides realism, experimental rigour and high fidelity of the human-robot interaction in the scenarios.

Specification, Validation and Verification Of Social, Legal, Ethical, Empathetic and Cultural Requirements For Autonomous Agents

“…We present here our second case study, a robotic assistive dressing (RAD) system tasked with aiding a physically impaired user with dressing adapted from the solution presented in [31]. A secondary function of RAD is to monitor In DressingService the state machine is initially in an Idle state.…”

Specification and Validation of Normative Rules for Autonomous Agents

“…Case study 1. The autonomous agent from the first case study is an assistive dressing robot from the social care domain [16]. The robot needs to dress a user with physical impairments with a garment by performing an interactive process that involves finding the garment, picking it, and placing it over the user's arms and torso.…”