Analysis for motion characteristics of human operator and motor area of higher brain function during human-robot cooperative work

Abstract

The aim of this research is to investigate the operator's motor skill obtained by the skill training during the human-robot cooperative task. There are many studies to investigate the perception of the motion of the robot and the electromyography (EMG) signal of the operator's muscles in the human-robot cooperative task. The time series data of the motion of the robot and the EMG signal of the muscles differ depending on the individual motor skill of the human operator. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the variation of the operator's motor skill. In former studies, the operators were made to subject the skill training to become skilled in performing the indicated task, however the motor skill acquired by the skill training have not been investigated in the field of the human-robot cooperative task. In this research, operators classified into three groups were trained on the following either of three kind of method; (i) the positioning task between the two target points (PTP), (ii) the tracking task following the target point, and (iii) the compound operation of the positioning task and the tracking task. In the positioning tasks after particular skill training, the motions of the robot are measured to investigate the operator's motor skill. To investigate the motions of the robot and the activity of the motor area of the subjects, the experiments were conducted in every month over a period of five months. The experimental results showed that there were significant differences in the motor skill and the activity of the motor area among the three groups.

Keywords

• human-robot cooperative task
• impedance control
• positioning task
• tracking task
• motor skill