Robotics: Science and Systems XVIII

Underwater Robot-To-Human Communication Via Motion: Implementation and Full-Loop Human Interface Evaluation

Michael Fulton, Muntaqim Mehtaz, Junaed Sattar, Owen Queeglay

Abstract:

Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) have long lagged behind other types of robots in supporting natural communication modes for human-robot interaction. Due to the limitations of the environment, most AUVs use digital displays or topside human-in-the-loop communications as their primary or only communication vectors. Natural methods for robot-to-human communication such as robot ""gestures"" have been proposed, but never evaluated on non-simulated AUVs. In this paper, we enhance, implement and evaluate a robot-to-human communication system for AUVs called Robot Communication Via Motion (RCVM), which utilizes explicit motion phrases (kinemes) to communicate with a dive partner. We present a small pilot study that shows our implementation to be reasonably effective in person followed by a large-population study, comparing the communication effectiveness of our RCVM implementation to three baseline systems. Our results establish RCVM as an effective method of robot-to-human communication underwater and reveal the differences with more traditional communication vectors in how accurately communication is achieved at different viewpoints and types of information payloads.

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Bibtex:

  
@INPROCEEDINGS{Fulton-RSS-22, 
    AUTHOR    = {Michael Fulton AND Muntaqim Mehtaz AND Junaed Sattar AND Owen Queeglay}, 
    TITLE     = {{Underwater Robot-To-Human Communication Via Motion: Implementation and Full-Loop Human Interface Evaluation}}, 
    BOOKTITLE = {Proceedings of Robotics: Science and Systems}, 
    YEAR      = {2022}, 
    ADDRESS   = {New York City, NY, USA}, 
    MONTH     = {June}, 
    DOI       = {10.15607/RSS.2022.XVIII.024} 
}