Comparing two gesture design methods for a humanoid robot: Human motion mapping by an RGB-D sensor and hand-puppeteering

In this paper, two gesture design methods for the humanoid robot NAO are proposed and compared. The first method is mapping human motions to the robot by an RGB-D sensor and kinematic modeling. The second method is based on hand-puppeteering. Thirteen subjects are recruited to design a forearm waving gesture for a NAO robot by the two methods. The obtained two groups of forearm waving gestures are then compared by another sixteen subjects. Our experimental results indicate that the forearm waving gestures obtained from the hand-puppeteering method are slower and have smaller range of motion than those obtained from the motion mapping method. Besides, people tend to perceive the forearm waving gestures obtained from the hand-puppeteering method as more likeable and as conveying the greeting message better than those obtained from the motion mapping method. This work contributes to a better understanding of the nature of the two gesture design methods and offers instructive reference for robot behavior designers on design method choosing.