On the role duality and switching in human-robot cooperation: An adaptive approach

Abstract

As the expansion of the field of robotics has continued, the physical interaction between robots and humans has become an increasingly important area of study. Many of these physical interactions can be seen as a cooperative task conducted by both the robot and the human. Often, when two humans are interacting, one of them will act as the leader of some aspect of the task and the other will act as a follower. This cooperation may require the switching of roles between leader and follower. This can be further complicated by the fact that different participants may be the leaders of different aspects of the task. Previous research in human-robot cooperation focused on the switching of only a single role. In this paper, we investigate a novel method for the simultaneous switching of two roles between a robot and a human participant. This switching method was examined using both fixed and adaptive parameters that control role switching. Overall, human-robot cooperation was successful in the task 85% of the time when using a non-adaptive method and 95% when using an adaptive control method.