research-article

Lead me by the hand: evaluation of a direct physical interface for nursing assistant robots

Authors:

Tiffany L. Chen,

Charles C. KempAuthors Info & Claims

HRI '10: Proceedings of the 5th ACM/IEEE international conference on Human-robot interaction

Pages 367 - 374

Published: 02 March 2010 Publication History

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Abstract

When a user is in close proximity to a robot, physical contact becomes a potentially valuable channel for communication. People often use direct physical contact to guide a person to a desired location (e.g., leading a child by the hand) or to adjust a person's posture for a task (e.g., a dance instructor working with a dancer). Within this paper, we present an implementation and evaluation of a direct physical interface for a human-scale anthropomorphic robot. We define a direct physical interface (DPI) to be an interface that enables a user to influence a robot's behavior by making contact with its body. Human-human interaction inspired our interface design, which enables a user to lead our robot by the hand and position its arms. We evaluated this interface in the context of assisting nurses with patient lifting, which we expect to be a high-impact application area. Our evaluation consisted of a controlled laboratory experiment with 18 nurses from the Atlanta area of Georgia, USA. We found that our DPI significantly outperformed a comparable wireless gamepad interface in both objective and subjective measures, including number of collisions, time to complete the tasks, workload (Raw Task Load Index), and overall preference. In contrast, we found no significant difference between the two interfaces with respect to the users' perceptions of personal safety.

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Cited By

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Thomaz AHoffman GCakmak M(2018)Computational Human-Robot InteractionFoundations and Trends in Robotics10.1561/23000000494:2-3(105-223)Online publication date: 13-Dec-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1561/2300000049
Gleeson BCurrie KMacLean KCroft E(2015)Tap and pushJournal of Human-Robot Interaction10.5555/3109835.31098414:1(95-113)Online publication date: 22-Jul-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3109835.3109841
Hughes DFarrow NProfita HCorrell NZhang ZCohen PBohus DHoraud RMeng H(2015)Detecting and Identifying Tactile Gestures using Deep Autoencoders, Geometric Moments and Gesture Level FeaturesProceedings of the 2015 ACM on International Conference on Multimodal Interaction10.1145/2818346.2830601(415-422)Online publication date: 9-Nov-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2818346.2830601
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Index Terms

Lead me by the hand: evaluation of a direct physical interface for nursing assistant robots
1. Applied computing
  1. Life and medical sciences
    1. Consumer health
    2. Health informatics

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Reviews

Reviewer: David John Williams

There is a global shortage of nurses, and the demographic trends promise even higher patient-to-nurse ratios. This paper evaluates user interfaces for a nursing assistant robot. A direct physical interface (DPI)-inspired by human-to-human interaction-is tested in different scenarios: leading the robot through a cluttered hospital-like environment and preparation for lifting. Such robots are not autonomous; direct forms of physical interaction are desirable to override or reposition the robot, or prevent an error. The DPI is compared to a familiar interface, a game pad. The robot consists of two anthropomorphic arms supported by a linear actuator and mounted on an omnidirectional base. Each arm has a wrist, including force and torque sensors; black rubber balls mounted on the ends of the arms feel forces, which are then fed back to the arms to allow appropriate motion. Safety is managed by using force thresholds before any actuation. Eighteen local nurses were recruited for a set of carefully designed and statistically robust experiments, where the nurse users carried out tasks, after initial training on each interface. The DPI was shown to result in lower workload. It also gave better objective performance, and was preferred. However, the experiments show that some users liked the game pad interface better than the DPI for precision positioning tasks. Chen and Kemp highlight the opportunity for more work in this area, including the influence of users' posture when controlling the machine. Understanding how those in people-oriented, care-giving professions interact with machines is an important and interesting area of research. Online Computing Reviews Service

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Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

HRI '10: Proceedings of the 5th ACM/IEEE international conference on Human-robot interaction

March 2010

400 pages

ISBN:9781424448937

General Chairs:
Pamela Hinds
Stanford University, USA
,
Hiroshi Ishiguro
Osaka University, Japan
,
Program Chairs:
Takayuki Kanda
ATR, Japan
,
Peter Kahn
University of Washington, USA

Publisher

IEEE Press

Publication History

Published: 02 March 2010

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HRI 10

Sponsor:

HRI 10: International Conference on Human Robot Interaction

March 2 - 5, 2010

Osaka, Japan

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HRI '10 Paper Acceptance Rate 26 of 124 submissions, 21%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 268 of 1,124 submissions, 24%

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Cited By

View all

Thomaz AHoffman GCakmak M(2018)Computational Human-Robot InteractionFoundations and Trends in Robotics10.1561/23000000494:2-3(105-223)Online publication date: 13-Dec-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1561/2300000049
Gleeson BCurrie KMacLean KCroft E(2015)Tap and pushJournal of Human-Robot Interaction10.5555/3109835.31098414:1(95-113)Online publication date: 22-Jul-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3109835.3109841
Hughes DFarrow NProfita HCorrell NZhang ZCohen PBohus DHoraud RMeng H(2015)Detecting and Identifying Tactile Gestures using Deep Autoencoders, Geometric Moments and Gesture Level FeaturesProceedings of the 2015 ACM on International Conference on Multimodal Interaction10.1145/2818346.2830601(415-422)Online publication date: 9-Nov-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2818346.2830601
Ferland FLétourneau DAumont AFrémy JLegault MLauria MMichaud F(2013)Natural interaction design of a humanoid robotJournal of Human-Robot Interaction10.5898/JHRI.1.2.Ferland1:2(118-134)Online publication date: 28-Jan-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5898/JHRI.1.2.Ferland
Ferland FAumont ALétourneau DMichaud FKuzuoka HEvers VImai MForlizzi J(2013)Taking your robot for a walkProceedings of the 8th ACM/IEEE international conference on Human-robot interaction10.5555/2447556.2447673(309-316)Online publication date: 3-Mar-2013
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Ljungblad SKotrbova JJacobsson MCramer HNiechwiadowicz KPoltrock SSimone CGrudin JMark GRiedl J(2012)Hospital robot at workProceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work10.1145/2145204.2145233(177-186)Online publication date: 11-Feb-2012
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Nakagawa KShiomi MShinozawa KMatsumura RIshiguro HHagita NBillard AKahn PAdams JTrafton G(2011)Effect of robot's active touch on people's motivationProceedings of the 6th international conference on Human-robot interaction10.1145/1957656.1957819(465-472)Online publication date: 6-Mar-2011
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Sabelli AKanda THagita NBillard AKahn PAdams JTrafton G(2011)A conversational robot in an elderly care centerProceedings of the 6th international conference on Human-robot interaction10.1145/1957656.1957669(37-44)Online publication date: 6-Mar-2011
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