Haptic human - robot collaboration

Summary form only given. In the past, working spaces of humans and robots were strictly separated, but recent developments have sought to bring robots into closer interaction with humans. Beside verbal and nonverbal communication, especially physical (haptic) interaction is challenging because of the bilateral signal and energy exchange and the mutual adaptation that takes place among partners. In contrast to haptic interaction that requires the exchange of force and motion signals only, haptic collaboration additionally implies the communication of intentions, the estimation of mental models, as well as the negotiation of action plans. Starting from the observation of human-human dyads, the talk will present principles found to be underlying haptic collaboration and illustrate first attempts in realizing technical, haptic collaboration partners.