Context-aware robot control using gesture episodes

TL;DR

This paper presents a context-aware gesture-based control method for robots that infers user intent from gesture episodes, context, and common sense, enabling flexible and intuitive robot programming in collaborative settings.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach that combines gesture episodes, context, and common sense to improve human-robot interaction and robot control adaptability.

Findings

System effectively infers user intent from gesture episodes.

Handles personal preferences of different users.

Works in simulated table-top manipulation scenarios.

Abstract

Collaborative robots became a popular tool for increasing productivity in partly automated manufacturing plants. Intuitive robot teaching methods are required to quickly and flexibly adapt the robot programs to new tasks. Gestures have an essential role in human communication. However, in human-robot-interaction scenarios, gesture-based user interfaces are so far used rarely, and if they employ a one-to-one mapping of gestures to robot control variables. In this paper, we propose a method that infers the user's intent based on gesture episodes, the context of the situation, and common sense. The approach is evaluated in a simulated table-top manipulation setting. We conduct deterministic experiments with simulated users and show that the system can even handle personal preferences of each user.