A motion rule for human-friendly robots based on electrodermal activity investigations and its application to mobile robot

Abstract

This paper investigates impressions on the robot motion based on EDA experiments, deduces a motion rule for human-friendly robots from the investigations, and applies it to a mobile robot experimental apparatus. In our previous work, it was suggested that actuation noise come from the robots tended to raise the sympathetic nerve system (SNS) response of the heart rate variability. In another experiment it is observed that blocking out either the sound or the sight attenuated the electrodermal activity (EDA), which reflects the SNS, to the robot motion. In the present work, the experiment was designed not so as to avoid the influence of the habituation differently from the previous experiments, which was the significant factor contributing to reducing the EDA responses. As a result of statistical analysis, it was concluded that the present work supported the result of the previous work. Based on these investigations, we deduced the motion rule for human-friendly robots from this investigation, that robots must reduce their motion speed in the immediate vicinity of humans.We constructed the experimental setup that a mobile robot approached human with its speed decreased in conformity with the rule. To estimate the distance from the human, the skin color detection and depth-from-focus techniques were applied to a monocular color video camera system with pan/tilt/zoom operation. The experimental result showed that a proper choice of commands could perform the robot motion to reduce its speed in the immediate vicinity of the human.

Effects of movement speed and predictability in human–robot collaboration

“…Hanajima et al. () found no differences in psychophysiological responses to different speed levels of a mobile robot. Similarly, Shomin, Vaidya, Hollis, and Forlizzi () reported no differences in perceived safety between fast (750 mm/s) and slow (300 mm/s) movements of a mobile robot, while Nonaka, Inoue, Arai, and Mae () report that higher speed causes effects of anxiety and surprise.…”

Perceived Safety in Physical Human Robot Interaction -- A Survey

“…Industrial manipulators constitute the type of robot on which the largest number of papers were written on perceived safety in pHRI. Earlier works used standard industrial manipulators, and precisely CRS A460 [20,21,[23][24][25], Mitsubishi Movemaster RM-501 [18,19,22], ABB IRB-120 [29,31], Comau SMART SiX [27], Yaskawa MOTOMAN-K10S and SONY SRX-410 [28]. More recent papers, instead, started using collaborative robots: KUKA LBR iiwa [35,38,43], Kinova MICO [33], UR3 [44], UR5 [39], UR10, [30], Sawyer [45], and Franka Emika Panda [42].…”

“…In general, for industrial manipulators, the feeling of perceived safety was enhanced when the relative human-robot distance was large [26,30,36,37,39], possibly above a certain threshold (e.g., 2 m in [26]), and when the robot speed was low [20, 24-26, 28, 44], also possibly below a certain threshold (e.g., 0.5 m/s in [26]). A related result is that human subjects could accept relatively high acceleration and speed of the robot when their relative distance was larger [17,19,31]. The robot size also influenced perceived safety, as smaller robots were perceived as less threatening [32].…”