Abstract-Search and rescue operations are often undertaken in smoke filled and noisy environments in which rescue teams must rely on haptic feedback for navigation and safe exit. In this paper, we discuss designing and evaluating a haptic interface to enable a human being to follow a robot through an environment with no-visibility. We first discuss the considerations that have led to our current interface design. The second part of the paper describes our testing procedure and the results of our first tests. Based on these results we discuss future improvements of our design.Keywords -human robot interaction; haptic interface; support for no-visibility/visually impaired

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This is a repository copy of Intuitive programming with remotely instructed robots inside future gloveboxes.

This paper investigates the efficacy of a tactile and haptic human robot interface developed and trialled to aid navigation in poor visibility and audibility conditions, which occur, for example, in e.g. search and rescue. The new developed interface generates haptic directional information that will support human navigation when other senses are not or only partially accessible. The central question of this paper was whether humans are able to interpret haptic signals as denoting different spatial directions. The effectiveness of the haptic signals was measured in a novel experimental set up. Participants were given a stick (replicating the robot interface) and asked to reproduce the specific spatial information denoted by each of the haptic signals. The task performance was examined quantitatively and results show that the haptic signals can denote distinguishable spatial directions, supporting the hypothesis that tactile and haptic information can be effectively used to aid human navigation. Implications for robotics application of the newly developed interface are discussed.

DeclarationI hereby declare that this thesis embodies the results of my own work done as a part of EPSRC funded REINS project and that it has not been submitted anywhere for any award apart from that of Doctor of Philosophy at Sheffield Hallam University I have made acknowledgement of the work of others and have made reference to work carried out in collaboration with other people. …………………………………………….. Ayan Ghosh Date Abstract AbstractSearch and rescue operations are often undertaken in dark and noisy environments in which rescue teams must rely on haptic feedback for exploration and safe exit.However, little attention has been paid specifically to haptic sensitivity in such contexts or to the possibility of enhancing communicational proficiency in the haptic mode as a life-preserving measure. The potential of robot swarms for search and rescue has been shown by the Guardians project (EU, 2006(EU, -2010; however the project also showed the problem of human robot interaction in smoky (non-visibility) and noisy conditions. The REINS project (UK, 2011(UK, -2015 focused on human robot interaction in such conditions. This research is a body of work (done as a part of the REINS project) which investigates the haptic interaction of a person with a guide robot in zero visibility. The thesis firstly reflects upon real world scenarios where people make use of the haptic sense to interact in zero visibility (such as interaction among firefighters and symbiotic relationship between visually impaired people and guide dogs). In addition, it reflects on the sensitivity and trainability of the haptic sense, to be used for the interaction. The thesis presents an analysis and evaluation of the design of a physical interface (designed by the consortium of the REINS project) connecting the human and the robotic guide in poor visibility conditions. Finally, it lays a foundation for the design of test cases to evaluate human robot haptic interaction, taking into consideration the two aspects of the interaction, namely locomotion guidance and environmental exploration. AbstractI would like to start by offering huge thanks to my primary academic supervisor Prof. Jacques Penders. His patience, support and encouragement has helped me through the undulating emotional process of academic research and writing. With his guidance, I have achieved many great feats, for that I am eternally grateful. I also would like to thank my second supervisor Dr. Peter Jones for his comments and support that gave my work an interdisciplinary focus.

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