Virtual Reality, a tool for safe testing of user experience in collaborative robotics

Abstract

<p class="first" id="d10555969e115">Collaborative robots (cobots) could help humans in tasks that are mundane, dangerous or where human contact carries risk, as it has been recently uncovered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, the collaboration between humans and robots is severely limited by the aspects of safety and comfort of human operators. In this paper, we propose the use of virtual reality (VR) as a way to test collaboration with robots in situations that are difficult or even impossible to safely test in real life, such as those where it would be dangerous to perform testing. Using VR as a means to evaluate collaboration with robots would allow collecting human behavioral data, subjective self-reports, and biosignals signifying human comfort, stress and cognitive load during collaboration. The use of VR allows direct porting of results to real robotic control systems. This approach can revolutionize the way we design, train and test cobots, and open up a range of new design applications: from industry, through healthcare to space operations. The naturalistic collaborative and assistive robots will be also useful when human motor control is impaired, whether by disease (like cerebral palsy or paralysis) or damage (like amputation) or for the older adult population.