A comparison of three interfaces using handheld devices to intuitively drive and show objects to a social robot: the impact of underlying metaphors

In this paper, we present three human-robot interfaces using a handheld device as a mediator object between a human and a robot, allowing the human to intuitively drive the robot and show it objects. One of the interface is based on a virtual keyboard interface on the iPhone, another is a gesture based interface on the iPhone too and the last one is a Wiimote based interface. They were designed to be easy to use, especially by non-expert domestic users, and to span different metaphors of interaction. In order to compare them and study the impact of the metaphor on the interaction, we designed a user-study based on two obstacle courses. Each of the 25 participants performed two courses with two different interfaces (total of 100 trials). Although the three interfaces were rather equally efficient and all considered as satisfying by the participants, the iPhone gesture interface was largely preferred while the Wiimote was poorly chosen due to the impact of the chosen metaphor.