Human Robot Human Interaction

Researcher:
Kyle Reed

In collaboration with:
Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago 		Human robot, robot humans Professors:
Michael Peshkin

Funded by:
NSF - Human and Social Dynamics (HSD)
What is this project about?
 

 
 

In many everyday tasks two people interact with each other. People move a bed together or help someone learn to swing a tennis racquet or any number of other tasks. These tasks involve kinesthetic (body position and movement) interaction, a communication channel distinct from spoken language and gestures. Previous research includes many types of interactions involving one person and one robot or two people separated by a non-mechanical linkage, but few studies have included two or more people interacting with one robot locally.
 
An example task:
 

 

Suppose you wanted to give someone a glass of water. Simple enough, you hand them the glass of water and they take it. Now, what was it that happened during this transaction? How did you know they had control of the glass and you could let go? If they didn't have a good grasp, would you still have let go?
 
Why do this research? Understanding kinesthetic interaction could be important in designing robots that interact physically with humans, and in dual-control situations. This project aims to investigate the effects of how people interact with other people if a robot is contolling the mediation.
 
The experiment: The experiments consist of various combinations of two people working alone and working together so we can find differences in how people work together versus alone. The task they repeatedly perform is a simple move-into-the-target task. The crank, shown above, is the apparatus they move. Either alone or together, they repeatedly move the crank into the target.

Another set of experiments involves replicating the interaction of one member of a dyad in a simulated robotic arm. The results of how two people interact are being used to design a robot to take the place of a human in a physical task.
 

Initial results:
 

 
 

 

We have found four interesting results that we are further investigating:
  1. Dyads perform the task faster than either of the constituent individuals in most of the time.
  2. Some of the dyads specialized in regards to starting and stopping the crank. None of them specialize in regards to pushing left and right.
  3. Some of the subjects showed a considerable amount of dyadic opposition force at the end of the motion.
Future research: One area this research could be applied is in physical therapy. A physical therapist could interact with a robot that acts on a patient to alleviate the force required while still allowing haptic transparency in both directions.
 
Demonstrations: Here are some pictures of the device in action as well as a few pictures from some of our many demo days.
 
 
 
Published Papers:
  • Kyle. B. Reed and Michael A. Peshkin. "Physical Collaboration of Human-Human and Human-Robot Teams," IEEE Transactions on Haptics, Vol. 1, Num. 2, pp. 108-120, July-Dec. 2008. [pdf]

  • Kyle B. Reed. "Understanding the Haptic Interactions of Working Together," Ph.D. Thesis, Northwestern University, June 2007. [pdf]

  • Kyle Reed, James Patton, Michael Peshkin. "Replicating Human-Human Physical Interaction," Proc. of IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Rome, April 2007. [pdf]

  • Kyle B. Reed, Mitra J. Hartmann, James Patton, Peter M. Vishton, Marcia Grabowecky, and Michael Peshkin. "Haptic cooperation between people, and between people and machines," Proc. of IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Beijing, October 2006. [pdf]

  • Kyle Reed, Michael Peshkin, Mitra J. Hartmann, Marcia Grabowecky, James Patton, and Peter M. Vishton. "Haptically Linked Dyads: Are Two Motor-Control Systems Better Than One?" Psychological Science, Vol. 17, Num 5, pp.365-366, May, 2006. [pdf or Press Release]

  • Kyle B. Reed, Michael Peshkin, Mitra J. Hartmann, J. Edward Colgate, and James Patton. "Kinesthetic Interaction," Proc. of the 9th Int. Conf. on Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR '05), Chicago, IL, June, 2005. [pdf]

  • Kyle B. Reed. "Specialization in Dyadic Shared Manual Tasks," Masters Thesis, Northwestern University, December 2004. [pdf]

  • Kyle Reed, Michael Peshkin, J. Edward Colgate, and James Patton. "Initial Studies in Human-Robot-Human Interaction: Fitts' Law for Two People," Proc. of IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), New Orleans, April 2004. [pdf]

 

Last updated by KBR on 9/7/10.