Design of Effective Robotic Gaze-Based Social Cueing for Users in Task-Oriented Situations: How to Overcome In-Attentional Blindness?

One direct way to express the sense of attention in a human interaction is through the gaze. This paper presents the enhancement of the sense of attention from the face of a human-sized mobile robot during an interaction. This mobile robot was designed as an assistance mobile robot and uses a flat screen at the top of the robot to display an iconic (simplified) face with big round eyes and a single line as a mouth. The implementation of eye-gaze contact from this iconic face is a problem because of the difficulty of simulating real 3D spherical eyes in a 2D image considering the perspective of the person interacting with the mobile robot. The perception of eye-gaze contact has been improved by manually calibrating the gaze of the robot relative to the location of the face of the person interacting with the robot. The sense of attention has been further enhanced by implementing cyclic face explorations with saccades in the gaze and by performing blinking and small movements of the mouth.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enhancing the Sense of Attention from an Assistance Mobile Robot by Improving Eye-Gaze Contact from Its Iconic Face Displayed on a Flat Screen

Rubies

Palacín

Clotet

2022

“…Typical information for visualisation may include the internal status of the robot, command acknowledgement, planned trajectory, and current workspace borders. In the simplest example of such an approach, the data visualisations are displayed on 2D monitors [ 16 ] (static or hand-held tablets), which, however, require the operator to interrupt the current task and check the visualisation on display. Light projectors represent a straightforward solution for representing additional graphical clues and notifications to the operator, possibly directly in the operator’s vicinity, making it easier for the clues to be noticed [ 17 , 18 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improved Mutual Understanding for Human-Robot Collaboration: Combining Human-Aware Motion Planning with Haptic Feedback Devices for Communicating Planned Trajectory

Grushko

Vysocký

Oščádal

et al. 2021

In a collaborative scenario, the communication between humans and robots is a fundamental aspect to achieve good efficiency and ergonomics in the task execution. A lot of research has been made related to enabling a robot system to understand and predict human behaviour, allowing the robot to adapt its motion to avoid collisions with human workers. Assuming the production task has a high degree of variability, the robot’s movements can be difficult to predict, leading to a feeling of anxiety in the worker when the robot changes its trajectory and approaches since the worker has no information about the planned movement of the robot. Additionally, without information about the robot’s movement, the human worker cannot effectively plan own activity without forcing the robot to constantly replan its movement. We propose a novel approach to communicating the robot’s intentions to a human worker. The improvement to the collaboration is presented by introducing haptic feedback devices, whose task is to notify the human worker about the currently planned robot’s trajectory and changes in its status. In order to verify the effectiveness of the developed human-machine interface in the conditions of a shared collaborative workspace, a user study was designed and conducted among 16 participants, whose objective was to accurately recognise the goal position of the robot during its movement. Data collected during the experiment included both objective and subjective parameters. Statistically significant results of the experiment indicated that all the participants could improve their task completion time by over 45% and generally were more subjectively satisfied when completing the task with equipped haptic feedback devices. The results also suggest the usefulness of the developed notification system since it improved users’ awareness about the motion plan of the robot.

“…Better user awareness can be provided by utilising notification devices (humanmachine interfaces, HMIs) that allow to understand motion plans and status of the robot. In order to convey information, these systems may utilise the primary sensory modalities of a human: vision (monitors [6], light projectors [7,8], mixed reality devices [9][10][11]), hearing (sound alerts and speech notifications [2,12]), touch (tactile feedback devices [4,[13][14][15]). Touch modality represents a robust and direct way of transferring information to the user, making it suitable to convey information to workers in industrial environments, where visual and auditory modalities might be busy or blocked.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intuitive Spatial Tactile Feedback for Better Awareness about Robot Trajectory during Human–Robot Collaboration

Grushko

Vysocký

Heczko

et al. 2021

In this work, we extend the previously proposed approach of improving mutual perception during human–robot collaboration by communicating the robot’s motion intentions and status to a human worker using hand-worn haptic feedback devices. The improvement is presented by introducing spatial tactile feedback, which provides the human worker with more intuitive information about the currently planned robot’s trajectory, given its spatial configuration. The enhanced feedback devices communicate directional information through activation of six tactors spatially organised to represent an orthogonal coordinate frame: the vibration activates on the side of the feedback device that is closest to the future path of the robot. To test the effectiveness of the improved human–machine interface, two user studies were prepared and conducted. The first study aimed to quantitatively evaluate the ease of differentiating activation of individual tactors of the notification devices. The second user study aimed to assess the overall usability of the enhanced notification mode for improving human awareness about the planned trajectory of a robot. The results of the first experiment allowed to identify the tactors for which vibration intensity was most often confused by users. The results of the second experiment showed that the enhanced notification system allowed the participants to complete the task faster and, in general, improved user awareness of the robot’s movement plan, according to both objective and subjective data. Moreover, the majority of participants (82%) favoured the improved notification system over its previous non-directional version and vision-based inspection.