Cooperative Physical Human-Human and Human-Robot Interaction

This chapter examines the physical interaction between two humans and between a human and a robot simulating a human in the absence of all other modes of interaction, such as visual and verbal. Generally, when asked, people prefer to work alone on tasks requiring accuracy. However, as demonstrated by the research in this chapter, when individuals are placed in teams requiring physical cooperation, their performance is frequently better than their individual performance despite perceptions that the other person was an impediment. Although dyads are able to perform certain actions significantly faster than individuals, dyads also exert large opposition forces. These opposition forces do not contribute to completing the task, but are the sole means of haptic communication between the dyads. Solely using this haptic communication channel, dyads were able to temporally divide the task based on task phase. This chapter provides further details on how two people haptically cooperate on physical tasks.