Operator Engagement Detection and Robot Behavior Adaptation in Human-Robot Interaction

- It has been shown that in human-robot interaction, the effectiveness of a robot varies inversely with the operator engagement in the task. Given the importance of maintaining optimal task engagement when working with a robot, it would be immensely useful to have a robotic system that can detect the level of operator engagement and modify its behavior if required. This paper presents a framework for human-robot interaction in which operator's physiological signals were analyzed to infer his/her engagement level and the robot behavior was adapted as a function of the operator affective state. Peripheral physiological signals were measured through wearable biofeedback sensors and a control architecture inspired by Riley's original information-flow model was developed to implement such human-robot interaction. The results from affect-elicitation tasks for human participants showed that it is possible to detect engagement through physiological sensing in real-time. A teleoperati...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: ICRA
• Authors: Pramila Rani, Nilanjan Sarkar
• Keywords: Engagement Level, Human-robot Interaction, ICRA 2005, Operator Engagement, Robotics