Explorative Study on Motor Interference During Synchronous Human and Robot Arm Movements Under Varied Presence of a Robot Head

This paper investigates the influence of a static robot head on deviations of human hand movements from task direction (motor interference) during simultaneous human and robot arm movements using a collaborative robot arm. Synchronous vertical and horizontal human and robot arm movements are conducted in all combinations (within-subjects factors direction and congruency). The presence of the head (head/ no head) is varied as a between-subjects factor. In this first step, only its motionless presence is deliberately focused at, in order to exclude contributions by eye- or head-movement behavior or facial expressions being difficult variables to generalize from. Participants' hands are tracked optically marker-based and deviations from task-related vertical, respectively, horizontal movements are evaluated. In contrast to expectations, results do not show a significant impact of the robot head on motor interference. Thus, there is evidence, that appearance might not be an activating factor for motor interference in HRI.