Integrating Robot Manufacturer Perspectives into Legible Factory Robot Light Communications

In a world with increasing numbers of robots operating in everyday human spaces, the employees at this robotics company are pioneers, intelligent point-to-point path planning and autonomous transport operations 150+ factory warehouse locations North America. At time research, consisted 250 employees. Unlike other industry models, their designed to operate people mixed human-machine yet no HRI style evaluations had previously been run robots. As early observers how workers robot interact, across varied job roles ranging from technology design customer relations, work sought leverage employee knowledge experiences identify opportunities for improving communication capabilities robots, resulting addition several state communications initial software set leveraging both employee- social literature- sourced ideas communicating lights. To achieve researcher spent summer onsite company, getting know stack culture. Her research activities included: (1) company-wide survey relative robot’s light, sound, motion was sent out analyzed, (2) development three new light sets (car-like, sweeping, heartbeat) five overall states (blocked, goal, turning, idle), (3) user study evaluating developed current default patterns, all significantly legibility targeted communications: blocked, idle. Our findings advance which patterns is best different states, showing that eye-catching lights high urgency such as subtle low Finally, latest release has deployed subset these currently client sites, i.e., anyone who updates will benefit results. This deployment ground future researchers exploring end-users sites have responded new, more communicative patterns.