A Natural Infrastructure-Less Human–Robot Interaction System

This letter introduces a novel methodology for letting a user interact with a robotic system in a natural manner. The main idea is that of defining an interaction system that does not require any specific infrastructure or device but relies on commonly utilized objects while leaving the user's hands free. Specifically, we propose to utilize a smartwatch (or any commercial sensorized wristband) for recognizing the motion of the user's forearm. This is achieved by measuring accelerations and angular velocities, which are then elaborated for recognizing gestures and for defining velocity commands for the robot. The proposed interaction system is evaluated experimentally with different users controlling a semiautonomous quadrotor. Results show that the usability and effectiveness of the proposed natural interaction system provide significant improvement in the human-robot interaction experience.

I. Introduction

Recent advances in robot control and safety systems allowed the access, in the last few years, of robots in our daily life. Robotic systems have been applied to several fields, such as social assistance  [1], surveillance [2], tour-guide [3] or floor cleaning  [4]. These contexts are very different from traditional industrial applications, in which robots are typically utilized by expert users. In fact, in daily life applications, users are typically inexperienced, and do not have any specific education related to robot programming: the design of effective human-robot interaction (HRI) systems is then of paramount importance, for these applications.