A mobile handshake robot system for generation of handshake request motion during active approach to a human

Abstract

Humans shake hands as a sign of greeting when they first meet, to greet one another and develop a rapport. A handshake is an embodied interaction through physical contact. In the case of a human and robot, the robot can smoothly begin to communicate and coexist with humans without eliciting feelings of aversion on the part of the humans, provided it generates a handshake motion that is emotionally acceptable to humans. Therefore, in this paper, we develop a handshake robot system that generates a handshake request motion during active approach to a human. First, we analyze handshake motions with approach between humans. Then, based on the analysis of handshake motions between humans, a handshake request motion model which is generated during an approaching motion is proposed. Furthermore, using the proposed model, a mobile handshake robot system is developed. This mobile handshake robot system actively approaches a human, and it generates a handshake request motion by extending its hand to the human. The developed handshake robot system is evaluated using a sensory evaluation to analyze handshake motion preferred by humans. Based on the sensory evaluation results, the developed mobile handshake robot system satisfactorily generates the handshake request motion during active approach to a human, and its effectiveness is demonstrated.

Keywords

• human interface
• human-robot interaction
• handshake
• embodied interaction
• human edmotion