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In this paper, we present a novel controller for safe, efficient, and intuitive robot-to-human object handovers and a set of experiments to evaluate user responses to the robot's handover behavior. The controller enables a robot to mimic human behavior by actively regulating the applied grip force according to the measured load force during a handover. We provide an implementation of the controller on a Willow Garage PR2 robot, demonstrating the feasibility of realizing our design on robots with basic sensor/actuator capabilities. A user study comparing four variations of our controller shows that our design yields both human-like and human-preferred object handovers.

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In this study, we investigate and characterize haptic interaction in human-to-human handovers and identify key features that facilitate safe and efficient object transfer. Eighteen participants worked in pairs and transferred weighted objects to each other while we measured their grip forces and load forces. Our data show that during object transfer, both the giver and receiver employ a similar strategy for controlling their grip forces in response to changes in load forces. In addition, an implicit social contract appears to exist in which the giver is responsible for ensuring object safety in the handover and the receiver is responsible for maintaining the efficiency of the handover. Compared with prior studies, our analysis of experimental data show that there are important differences between the strategies used by humans for both picking up/placing objects on table and that used for handing over objects, indicating the need for specific robot handover strategies as well. The results of this study will be used to develop a controller for enabling robots to perform object handovers with humans safely, efficiently, and intuitively.