Intuitive and Safe Interaction in Multi-User Human Robot Collaboration Environments through Augmented Reality Displays

Abstract

As autonomous collaborative robots are more widely used in work environments alongside humans it is of great importance to facilitate the communication between people and robotic systems, in a way that promotes safety and productivity. To this end, we propose an Augmented Reality (AR) based system that allows workers in a human-robot collaborative environment to interact with a robot while also receiving information regarding the robot state and plans that relate to the human’s safety and trust, such as the intended movement of the robotic arm or the navigation plan of the mobile platform. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed system we conducted experiments with 13 participants, where two users had to work in the same workspace while being assisted by a mobile manipulator. We measured the task completion time as well as the robot idle time using our AR-based human-robot interaction system and compared them to a conventional setup without the use of augmented reality. Additional, subjective evaluations related to user satisfaction, system usability, perceived safety and trust showed that users assessed the system in a positive way and preferred AR visualization over more traditional interfaces.