An important component for the effective collaboration
of humans with robots is the compatibility of their
movements, especially when humans physically collaborate with
a robot partner. Following previous findings that humans
interact more seamlessly with a robot that moves with humanlike
or biological velocity profiles, this study examined whether
humans can adapt to a robot that violates human signatures.
The specific focus was on the role of extensive practice and realtime
augmented feedback. Six groups of participants physically
tracked a robot tracing an ellipse with profiles where velocity
scaled with the curvature of the path in biological and nonbiological
ways, while instructed to minimize the interaction
force with the robot. Three of the 6 groups received real-time
visual feedback about their force error. Results showed that
with 3 daily practice sessions, when given feedback about their
force errors, humans could decrease their interaction forces
when the robot’s trajectory violated human-like velocity patterns.
Conversely, when augmented feedback was not provided,
there were no improvements despite this extensive practice. The
biological profile showed no improvements, even with feedback,
indicating that the (non-zero) force had already reached a
floor level. These findings highlight the importance of biological
robot trajectories and augmented feedback to guide humans to
adapt to non-biological movements in physical human-robot
interaction. These results have implications on various fields of
robotics, such as surgical applications and collaborative robots
for industry.
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This content will become publicly available on May 3, 2025
Physically Assistive Robots: A Systematic Review of Mobile and Manipulator Robots That Physically Assist People with Disabilities
More than 1 billion people in the world are estimated to experience significant disability. These disabilities can impact people's ability to independently conduct activities of daily living, including ambulating, eating, dressing, taking care of personal hygiene, and more. Mobile and manipulator robots, which can move about human environments and physically interact with objects and people, have the potential to assist people with disabilities in activities of daily living. Although the vision of physically assistive robots has motivated research across subfields of robotics for decades, such robots have only recently become feasible in terms of capabilities, safety, and price. More and more research involves end-to-end robotic systems that interact with people with disabilities in real-world settings. In this article, we survey papers about physically assistive robots intended for people with disabilities from top conferences and journals in robotics, human–computer interactions, and accessible technology, to identify the general trends and research methodologies. We then dive into three specific research themes—interaction interfaces, levels of autonomy, and adaptation—and present frameworks for how these themes manifest across physically assistive robot research. We conclude with directions for future research.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1924435
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10492877
- Publisher / Repository:
- Annual Reviews
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Annual Review of Control, Robotics, and Autonomous Systems
- Volume:
- 7
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2573-5144
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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