This paper proposes a novel human-multi-robot-system interaction approach that enjoys two main features: natural interaction and affect-based adaptation of robots behavior. Specifically, the proposed system enables interaction by means of a wrist-worn device, such as a commercial smartwatch, which allows to track user's movements and heart activity. Thus, on the one side, the proposed system allows the user to intuitively drive the robots by establishing a natural mapping between wrist movements and robots velocity. On the other side, the system estimates user's mental fatigue during interaction by means of the analysis of heart rate variability. The proposed interaction system adapts then the behavior of the multi-robot system when the interacting user gets overwhelmed with the interaction and control task, which is then simplified. Experimental validation is provided, to show the effectiveness of the proposed system. First, the natural and affect-based interaction are considered separately. Then, the approach is tested considering a complex realistic scenario, which is simulated in virtual reality in order to get an immersive and realistic interaction experience. The results of the experimental validation clearly show that the proposed affect-based adaptive system leads to relieving the user's fatigue and mental workload. Keywords Human-multi-robot-system interaction • Natural ineraction • Affective robotics • Human-centred robotics This is one of the several papers published in Autonomous Robots comprising the Special Issue on Multi-Robot and Multi-Agent Systems.
The interaction between a user and a multi-robot system in a shared environment is a relatively uncharted topic. But, as these types of systems will increase in the future years, an efficient way of communication is necessary. To this aim, it is interesting to discover if a multi-robot system can communicate its intentions exploiting only some motion-variables, which are characteristics of the motion of the robots. This study is about the legibility of a multi-robot system: in particular, we focus on the influence of these motion-variables on the legibility of more than one group of robots that move in a shared environment with the user. These motion-variables are: trajectory, dispersion and stiffness. They are generally used to define the motion of a group of mobile robots. Trajectory and dispersion were found relevant for the correctness of the communication between the user and the multi-robot system, while stiffness was found relevant for the rapidity of communication. The analysis of the influence of the motion-variables was carried out with an ANOVA (analysis of variance) based on a series of data coming from an experimental campaign conducted in a virtual reality setup .
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