Programming a robot arm requires users to interpret coordinate frames, joint rotations, and trajectories that are not directly visible. Augmented reality (AR) can make these spatial relations visible, but its benefits may depend on users' spatial ability. We conducted a randomized between-subjects experiment ($N=71$) in which participants learned to program a physical UR5e robot using either conventional teach-pendant controls with PDF instructions or a head-mounted AR interface that displayed joints, coordinate frames, and waypoints. We measured users' spatial ability with the Mental Rotation Test and assessed subjective cognitive load and system usability. Overall, AR did not significantly improve cognitive load or usability compared with conventional instruction. However, exploratory analyses revealed a compensatory effect: spatial ability predicted higher usability and lower extraneous cognitive load in the control group, but not in the AR condition, suggesting AR mitigated the disadvantage typically faced by users with lower spatial ability. These findings point to a compensatory function of AR that should be explored to guide the design of personalized AR interfaces for human-robot interaction.
University of Calgary（卡尔加里大学）；University College London（伦敦大学学院）
This paper contributes to a taxonomy of augmented reality and robotics based on a survey of 460 research papers. Augmented and mixed reality (AR/MR) have emerged as a new way to enhance human-robot interaction (HRI) and robotic interfaces (e.g., actuated and shape-changing interfaces). Recently, an increasing number of studies in HCI, HRI, and robotics have demonstrated how AR enables better interactions between people and robots. However, often research remains focused on individual explorations and key design strategies, and research questions are rarely analyzed systematically. In this pape…
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, conducting Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) studies in person is not permissible due to social distancing practices to limit the spread of the virus. Therefore, a virtual reality (VR) simulation with a virtual robot may offer an alternative to real-life HRI studies. Like a real intelligent robot, a virtual robot can utilize the same advanced algorithms to behave autonomously. This paper introduces HAVEN (HRI-based Augmentation in a Virtual robot Environment using uNity), a VR simulation that enables users to interact with a virtual robot. The goal of this system desi…
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill（北卡罗来纳大学教堂山分校）；Colorado School of Mines（科罗拉多矿业学院）；IBM Research AI（IBM人工智能研究院）
Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality for Human-Robot Interaction (VAM-HRI) has been gaining considerable attention in research in recent years. However, the HRI community lacks a set of shared terminology and framework for characterizing aspects of mixed reality interfaces, presenting serious problems for future research. Therefore, it is important to have a common set of terms and concepts that can be used to precisely describe and organize the diverse array of work being done within the field. In this paper, we present a novel taxonomic framework for different types of VAM-HRI interfaces, c…
SUNY Binghamton（纽约州立大学宾汉姆顿分校）；OPPO US Research Center（OPPO美国研究中心）
Effective human-robot collaboration (HRC) requires extensive communication among the human and robot teammates, because their actions can potentially produce conflicts, synergies, or both. We develop a novel augmented reality (AR) interface to bridge the communication gap between human and robot teammates. Building on our AR interface, we develop an AR-mediated, negotiation-based (ARN) framework for HRC. We have conducted experiments both in simulation and on real robots in an office environment, where multiple mobile robots work on delivery tasks. The robots could not complete the tasks on th…
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology（香港科技大学）
Human drone interaction in autonomous navigation incorporates spatial interaction tasks, including reconstructed 3D map from the drone and human desired target position. Augmented Reality (AR) devices can be powerful interactive tools for handling these spatial interactions. In this work, we build an AR interface that displays the reconstructed 3D map from the drone on physical surfaces in front of the operator. Spatial target positions can be further set on the 3D map by intuitive head gaze and hand gesture. The AR interface is deployed to interact with an autonomous drone to explore an unkno…
Going Down the Abstraction Stream with Augmented Reality and Tangible Robots: the Case of Vector Instruction
CHILI Lab Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne（CHILI实验室 雅各布·冯·利希滕堡联邦理工学院）；School of Computing & Information Systems University of Melbourne（计算与信息系统学院 澳大利亚墨尔本大学）
Humans are highly skilled in communicating their intent for when and where a handover would occur. However, even the state-of-the-art robotic implementations for handovers typically lack of such communication skills. This study investigates visualization of the robot's internal state and intent for Human-to-Robot Handovers using Augmented Reality. Specifically, we explore the use of visualized 3D models of the object and the robotic gripper to communicate the robot's estimation of where the object is and the pose in which the robot intends to grasp the object. We tested this design via a user …
Technical University of Berlin（柏林工业大学）；Microsoft Cloud and AI Security（微软云与人工智能安全部门）
Augmented Reality and mobile robots are gaining much attention within industries due to the high potential to make processes cost and time efficient. To facilitate augmented reality, a calibration between the Augmented Reality device and the environment is necessary. This is a challenge when dealing with mobile robots due to the mobility of all entities making the environment dynamic. On this account, we propose a novel approach to calibrate the Augmented Reality device using 3D depth sensor data. We use the depth camera of a cutting edge Augmented Reality Device - the Microsoft Hololens for d…
College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Harbin Engineering University（哈尔滨工程大学机电工程学院）
In this paper, a mobile camera positioning method based on forward and inverse kinematics of robot is proposed, which can realize far point positioning of imaging position and attitude tracking in large scene enhancement. Orbit precision motion through the framework overhead cameras and combining with the ground system of sensor array object such as mobile robot platform of various sensors, realize the good 3 d image registration, solve any artifacts that is mobile robot in the large space position initialization problem, effectively implement the large space no marks augmented reality, human-…
Robots are widespread across diverse application contexts. Teaching robots to perform tasks, in their respective contexts, demands a high domain and programming expertise. However, robot programming faces high entry barriers due to the complexity of robot programming itself. Even for experts robot programming is a cumbersome and error-prone task where faulty robot programs can be created, causing damage when being executed on a real robot. To simplify the process of robot programming, we combine Augmented Reality (AR) with principles of end-user development. By combining them, the real environ…
Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines, Georgia Institute of Technology（佐治亚理工学院机器人与智能机器研究所）
A human-in-the-loop system is proposed to enable collaborative manipulation tasks for person with physical disabilities. Studies show that the cognitive burden of subject reduces with increased autonomy of assistive system. Our framework obtains high-level intent from the user to specify manipulation tasks. The system processes sensor input to interpret the user's environment. Augmented reality glasses provide ego-centric visual feedback of the interpretation and summarize robot affordances on a menu. A tongue drive system serves as the input modality for triggering a robotic arm to execute th…
We present a method to register individual members of a robotic swarm in an augmented reality display while showing relevant information about swarm dynamics to the user that would be otherwise hidden. Individual swarm members and clusters of the same group are identified by their color, and by blinking at a specific time interval that is distinct from the time interval at which their neighbors blink. We show that this problem is an instance of the graph coloring problem, which can be solved in a distributed manner in O(log(n)) time. We demonstrate our approach using a swarm chemistry simulati…
We present an approach for visualizing mobile robots through an Augmented Reality headset when there is no line-of-sight visibility between the robot and the human. Three elements are visualized in Augmented Reality: 1) Robot's 3D model to indicate its position, 2) An arrow emanating from the robot to indicate its planned movement direction, and 3) A 2D grid to represent the ground plane. We conduct a user study with 18 participants, in which each participant are asked to retrieve objects, one at a time, from stations at the two sides of a T-junction at the end of a hallway where a mobile robo…
The Chinese University of Hong Kong（香港中文大学）；The Johns Hopkins University（约翰斯·霍普金斯大学）
Robot-assisted surgery has become progressively more and more popular due to its clinical advantages. In the meanwhile, the artificial intelligence and augmented reality in robotic surgery are developing rapidly and receive lots of attention. However, current methods have not discussed the coherent integration of AI and AR in robotic surgery. In this paper, we develop a novel system by seamlessly merging artificial intelligence module and augmented reality visualization to automatically generate the surgical guidance for robotic surgery education. Specifically, we first leverage reinforcement …
Daimler AG R&D（戴姆勒股份公司研发部）；University of Ulm（乌尔姆大学）
This paper proposes an approach that predicts the road course from camera sensors leveraging deep learning techniques. Road pixels are identified by training a multi-scale convolutional neural network on a large number of full-scene-labeled night-time road images including adverse weather conditions. A framework is presented that applies the proposed approach to longer distance road course estimation, which is the basis for an augmented reality navigation application. In this framework long range sensor data (radar) and data from a map database are fused with short range sensor data (camera) t…
