Exploring the Human Interactivity with a Robot to Obtain the Fundamental Properties of Materials

• Main Author: Christian, William L.
• Format: Others
• Published: Scholar Commons 2010
• Subjects: Haptics; Robotics; Interaction; Engineering; Science; American Studies; Arts and Humanities; Mechanical Engineering
• Online Access: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/3816; http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5012&context=etd

This research studies the way in which humans and robots interact with each other. When two humans are working together through a set of robotic devices, do they tend to work together or fight with each other more? In which Cartesian direction do they have the most difficulty? Does fighting drastically affect the performance of the team? Finally, what measures can be taken to promote better cooperation between humans and robots to ultimately allow humans to work just as comfortably with a robotic partner as with a human partner? This research answers these questions and provides an analysis of human-robot interaction. It was found that significant fighting between the subjects does have a negative impact on the performance of the team. Out of the three Cartesian directions, the up-down direction was found to be the most difficult to cooperate in. Although the level of fighting varied greatly among different dyads, two things which greatly assisted in completing the experiments were force feedback and visual feedback. Different methods of feedback were tested, and subject performance in each was compared.