Human-robot communication by means of hand-clapping (preliminary experiment with hand-clapping language)

Conventionally, human-robot communication and robot-robot communication are dealt with in different manners in general. From the viewpoint of cooperation between human staff and robots as a heterogeneous group, however, it is natural and desirable that all of the communication within the group is performed based on a uniform communication manner. In this study, we deal with a communication method that can be adopted for both human-robot and robot-robot communications. We discuss a communication style by means of simple sound such as the hand-clapping. A communication language is introduced; the configuration of syllables, the words and their parts of speech and the syntax are designed from a general point of view. Perceptibility assessment is performed for the syllables. A preliminary experimental study is performed and the feasibility of the proposed human-robot communication style is examined. The obtained result indicates the possibility and importance of usability viewpoint of the proposed communication approach.