United States

As end users interact with increasing numbers of autonomous or semi-autonomous systems, collaboration and supervision become more complicated. People must simultaneously manage multiple systems, and most current interfaces do not scale. Augmented Reality (AR) offers a promising solution by placing information over the real world, allowing users to concurrently track the scene and robot(s) -- potentially improving scaling for these devices. In this work, we leverage user gaze - a powerful indicator of attention suitable for reactive systems - to lower cognitive burden and improve performance such that scaling to multiple agents is possible. Gaze is probed in two modalities. In active mode, the user looks at a menu and presses a button to request additional information. The passive mode provides more information when the users gaze dwells on the menu. We performed two studies: 1) participants complete a visual search task with increasing numbers of virtual robotic agents and 2) participants must track the dynamic status of a team with physical agents. Results from the first study show that the passive and active interfaces provide better scaling compared to a non-interactive interface as the number of robots increases. In both studies, users preferred the passive mode, citing a lower mental demand, effort, and frustration.

IEEE RO-MAN 2024

Gaze-Based Augmented Reality Interfaces to Support Scalable Human-Robot Teaming

interfacing

teaming

gaze

**31st IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication**
 This conference is a leading forum where state-of-the-art innovative results, the latest developments as well as future perspectives relating to robot and human interactive communication are presented and discussed.
 
 The conference covers a wide range of topics related to Robot and Human Interactive Communication, involving theories, methodologies, technologies, empirical and experimental studies. Papers related to the study of robotic technology, psychology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, human factors, ethics and policies, interaction-based robot design and other topics related to human-robot interaction are welcome.
 
 **CONFERENCE THEME:**
 Social, asocial, and antisocial robots
 
 Robots are starting to populate our lives: at work, in our homes, hotels, shops. However, not everybody is comfortable with robots finding a place in society. For example, people may be afraid that robots will replace humans in their jobs. This belief is exacerbated by the media that, on one side, raise expectations of robots’ capabilities, while amplifying fears and worries on the other side.
 
 In the next years, due to the increasing request for interaction with people in social environments, academic research and market analyses predict that robots will become more and more “social”. But, at the same time, robots may incur the risk of being perceived as “asocial” as their pervasiveness in everyday environments may become an obstacle to social interaction between humans. Or they may even be rejected as “antisocial” if researchers do not take care to develop robots that behave according to the customs and habits of the communities where they are expected to operate.
 
 To prevent this from happening, robotic researchers can no longer take the luxury of being mere technicians. They must be capable of addressing all the challenges raised by future robot-populated communities in a multidisciplinary way. They need to share their knowledge with the public to make people aware of what robots really are, what expectations we can have from them, the risks we may incur, and the possible mitigation plans.
 
 While being open to any kind of contribution related to Human-Robot Interactive Communication, the RO-MAN 2022 conference will emphasize these aspects of robotic research. How can we create robots capable of being welcomed as our assistants and companions in society while, at the same time, not being perceived as “asocial” or “antisocial?” How can we create robots perceived as facilitators of the natural development of human beings and communities, rather than obstacles?
 
 Contributions from different disciplines, not exclusively related to technological development, will be welcomed as crucial to pave the way to global acceptance of future robots with an informed attitude.
 
 [![](https://assets.underline.io/uploads/markdown_image/1/image/af259abe105b3791c498ae1552d75710.png)](https://drive.google.com/file/d/18w73BZPB_JVOgcrcdZDqYpEupwVt4CnU/view?usp=sharing)

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IEEE RO-MAN 2022

31st IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication
This conference is a leading forum where state-of-the-art innovative results, the latest developments as well as future perspectives relating to robot and human interactive communication are presented and discussed.

technical paper

[![](https://assets.underline.io/markdown_image/1/image/f25361a85b7c83a7476c0b3c1c0bb1b2.png)](https://drive.google.com/file/d/18jcAcciCBQHj6R07Dbpm2HCOBEIwAOCU/view?usp=sharing)


Dear Colleagues and Friends,

The 33rd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, IEEE RO-MAN 2024, was held at Pasadena Convention Center in Pasadena, USA.

The theme of the IEEE RO-MAN 2024 was **“Embracing Human-Centered HRI”**.

With the continuous technological effort of understanding human needs, creating human-desired robotic systems, and developing real human user experiences, we are marching together towards building a promising and excellent human quality of life, all for our wellness and our next generation.

The conference provided a forum for researchers and practitioners to discuss a variety of topics related to the broad theme of Robot and Human Interactive Communication involving theories, methodologies, technologies, empirical and experimental studies, and generated more insights for the future of Robot and Human Interactive Communication!

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The 33rd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication was held in Pasadena, California, USA. The theme of the IEEE RO-MAN 2024 was “Embracing Human-Centered HRI”.

This paper introduces a voice-controlled Human Machine Interface (HMI) tailored for an assistive robotic exoskeleton glove, aimed at assisting patients coping with Brachial Plexus Injuries (BPI) in regaining their lost grasping functionality. The development of this HMI draws upon clinical experimentation results, forming a foundation for its design. The paper delves into the challenges encountered while employing a prior voice-based HMI, which necessitated an internet connection for complex computations and exhibited limitations in effectively processing concise commands. To address these issues, an innovative voice-controlled HMI system is proposed, featuring fixed-word detection to replace the speech-to-text (STT) converter and the Neutral Language Processor (NLP) to reduce computational overhead. Furthermore, the new HMI replaces the previous text-independent speaker verification with a text-dependent, one-shot learning approach. This enhancement streamlines custom retraining, significantly improving speaker verification accuracy for concise commands. Experimental results substantiate the applicability of the proposed voice-controlled HMI for assisting individuals with BPI through specialized exoskeleton gloves.

Voice-Controlled Human-Machine Interface for an Assistive Exoskeleton Glove Aiding Patients with Brachial Plexus Injuries

In this paper, we improve the robustness of a multi-camera gesture recognition system in multi-person situations by identifying and tracking the operator. This system is meant as an intelligent room to operate and interact with surrounding devices based on pointing gestures. In the method, we identify the operator by a hand-raising gesture, followed by tracking using the coordinates of the center of the operator's head and extracting only the operator's whole body. From the experimental results, we confirmed that highly accurate tracking could be performed in a multi-person situation of 2 to 5 persons, and that the success rate of extracting images of the operator's whole body was more than 70%. We also clarified issues in the operator identification process and the extraction process.

Robust Gesture-Based Appliance Control Via Operator Identification and Tracking

In recent years, labor accidents and a shortage of skilled workers due to an aging population have become significant issues at construction sites in Japan. To address these challenges, we are developing a Cyber-Physical System (CPS) platform called ROS2-TMS for Construction, which aims to improve both the efficiency and safety of earthwork operations. In this study, we propose a task management system for construction machinery using an open platform named OPERA as an additional function of ROS2-TMS for Construction. This task management system controls construction machinery using environmental information stored in a database, which collects and stores data from sensors deployed throughout the construction site, and an extended Behavior Tree. At the end of this study, the results of the initial validation tests of autonomous earthwork operations using an OPERA-compatible backhoe ZX200 are presented.

Task Management System for Construction Machinery Using the Open Platform OPERA

We propose a novel on-line multi-UAV coverage path planning method for 3D reconstruction. UAVs play ho- mogeneous roles in most existing multi-UAV path planning methods, where their flexibility is not fully exploited. The fact that UAVs can explore with different missions and strategies at different heights simultaneously is not well considered. Therefore, we give UAVs different identities by presenting a global-local pattern, where global UAV locates the interesting regions while local UAV explores these regions in succession. Leveraging the mechanism of sensorimotor coordination, our strategy adjusts the paths of local UAV on-line according to the input from global UAV in order to gather more information and save time. In addition, our method is compatible with real-time SLAM systems. Simulation shows that our strategy takes less time than other strategies based on area-division, and indicates that it gathers more information for better reconstruction.

Sensorimotor Coordinated Multi-UAV Coverage Path Planning

It is essentially required to predict the ball's flight trajectory accurately and timely for a robotic table tennis ball bouncing task. Existing solutions, which can be categorized into model-based and learning-based groups, both exhibits unpleasant disadvantages. For example, they often require to identify many dynamic parameters accurately or to collect extensive labeled data, which are generally very difficult or costly to achieve in real world. In this paper, we proposed a light-wight and rapid trajectory prediction approach for online table tennis bouncing tasks based on a simplified model. In the proposed approach, the ball's flight poses are captured and estimated by a low-cost RGB-D camera. Then the ball's landing position is predicted in advance by using a fitted 3D parabola. Compared with existing solutions, our proposed approach is lightweight and easy to deploy. In experiments, 66 flight trajectories of the ball are collected to serve as benchmark. The prediction errors for all landing positions are all less than 20mm, in which most of them are less than 10mm. In addition, the prediction can be achieved 141.7ms in advance, which is fast enough for the robotic arm to plan and move itself to the predicted landing point.

A Light-Weight and Rapid Table Tennis Ball Trajectory Prediction Approaches towards Online Bouncing Task

There is an interest in and need for the use of semiautonomous robots in various fields, such as disaster response. Over the years, different techniques for semiautonomous control were developed, ranging from teleoperation guidance to different user interface designs for setting task constraints and goals interactively. Among those, affordance templates emerged as a recent method for users to efficiently provide robots with contextual information about object shapes, properties, and affordances. In many fields where direct teleoperation is common, affordance templates seem to be a promising candidate for improving performance and usability. However, despite the reports on the potential benefits of this technique in comparison to direct teleoperation, they are often qualitative or focus on tasks where teleoperation is particularly challenging. This can be a problem because task difficulty can influence different performance metrics and human factors, so results from studies that show large differences in task difficulty between interaction modes cannot be directly generalized to tasks with smaller or non-existent differences in difficulty. In this study, we aim to evaluate the effectiveness of affordance templates in the context of debris removal for disaster response, a task where direct teleoperation is a viable technique. We compared the two methods in a simulated setting through a user study involving 41 participants by measuring a) usability through questionnaires and b) performance on secondary tasks, an established measure of spare information processing capacity. The study results show that despite similar difficulty, users performed better on secondary tasks when using affordance template-based semiautonomy in this setting.

An Evaluation of Affordance Templates for Human-Robot Interaction

Haptic feedback is essential for humans to successfully perform complex and delicate manipulation tasks. A recent rise in tactile sensors has enabled robots to leverage the sense of touch and expand their capability drastically. However, many tasks still need human intervention/guidance. For this reason, we present a teleoperation framework designed to provide haptic feedback to human operators based on the data from camera-based tactile sensors mounted on the robot gripper. Partial autonomy is introduced to prevent slippage of grasped objects during task execution. Notably, we rely exclusively on low-cost off-the-shelf hardware to realize an affordable solution. We demonstrate the versatility of the framework on nine different objects ranging from rigid to soft and fragile ones, using three different operators on real hardware.

Low-Cost Teleoperation with Haptic Feedback through Vision-Based Tactile Sensors for Rigid and Soft Object Manipulation

Autonomous Guided Vehicles (AGVs) are becoming increasingly common in industrial environments to transport heavy equipment around warehouses. Within the idea of Industry 5.0, these AGVs are expected to work alongside humans in the same shared workspace. To enable smooth and trustworthy interaction between workers and AGVs, the AGVs must be able to model the workers' behavior and plan their trajectories around it. In this paper, we introduce a Finite Automaton Model (FAM) to model worker walking behavior in such a context. We conduct a human subject experiment using a Virtual Reality (VR) environment to collect data about worker trajectories to tune our model. We show that not only is our model more interpretable, but also outperforms machine learning models at classifying worker behavior with limited training data. Future research can use our model to modify AGV behavior to promote trustworthy human-AGV interaction.

Identifying Worker Motion Through a Manufacturing Plant: A Finite Automaton Model

Prior research on the fear of robots in blue-collar workplaces shows that perception is influenced by minority status, education level, job domains, age, and location. However, the perception of robots is not universally negative, as workers exhibit positive views when robots can improve safety, enhance existing skills, or take over less desirable tasks. Currently, a gap exists on the types of barriers to safety that a worker faces or how the job context, e.g. hours spent in heavy lifts, or demographics, e.g. weight or height, contribute to perceptions of safety, need for and type of assistance from a co-worker, and perception of an assistive robot. Through a survey of 530 blue-collar workers, we find that 85% of the barriers to safety are physical, psychological, and a combination of physical and psychological factors. Our survey shows that the time spent in performing heavy lifts is a significant predictor for barriers to safety, while the interaction between weight and time is a marginal predictor. We find that the barriers to safety significantly influence perception of job longevity. We find the worker's height is a significant predictor to comfort levels in receiving assistance from co-workers, while weight and the interaction between height and weight are marginally significant. We find that the worker's weight and hours spent in lifting are significant predictors for the type of assistance expected. Our findings show that the number of hours spent in lifting is a significant predictor on the type of robotic assistance expected. Based on our results, collaborative robots should be designed to show awareness of physical and physiological needs and cognizance to the worker's physical traits, as well as the amount of time the worker has spent on lifting tasks.

Analyzing Perceptions on Barriers to Safety in the Workforce and Expectations on Human and Robotic Assistance

Industry 5.0 signifies a transformative era where humans and robots collaborate closely, leading to advancements in manufacturing efficiency and personalization. In light of this, it becomes essential to assess the robots trustworthiness to ensure a secure environment and equitable workload distribution. The majority of trust assessments hinge on post-hoc questionnaires for the extent of trust experienced during the interaction. A data-driven approach is required to promptly assess trust levels in real-time, allowing for the adjustment of robot behavior to align with human needs. The paper proposes a chemical industry scenario where a robot assisted a human in the process of mixing chemicals. Several machine learning models, including deep learning, were developed using body motion data to categorize the level of trust exhibited by the human operator. The models achieve an accuracy exceeding 90%. The results clearly show the feasibility of data-driven trust assessment.

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Voice-Controlled Human-Machine Interface for an Assistive Exoskeleton Glove Aiding Patients with Brachial Plexus Injuries

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