Utilizing Physical Objects and Metaphors for Human Robot Interaction

Mouse, keyboard and graphical user interfaces are commonly used in the field of human-robot interaction (HRI) for robot control. Although these traditional user interfaces (UI) are being accepted as the standard for the majority of computational tasks, their generic nature and interaction styles may not offer ideal mapping to various robotic tasks, such as locomotion and navigation. In our research we intend to explore alternative UIs that could take advantage of human innate skills of physical object manipulation and spatial perception, and overcome some of the problems associated with traditional UIs. We suggest the use of tangible user interfaces (TUIs) for HRI applications, leveraging on existing and well-learned physical metaphors for interaction with robots, and exploring new ways to tangibly control one-to-many robot group interaction tasks. In this paper we will describe our current research efforts and findings, and outline our proposed research plans.