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7.3
Limitations and Future Work
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the validity of our method by assembling a
block task. Our results show one example of the head-fixed design with no verbal
cues leading the robot-first instructions. From the experimental conditions, we infer
that this change in the communication strategies is caused by the lack of confirmatory
modalities in the head-fixed robot. Our experiment only uses nonverbal communica-
tion. Our findings may be useful if the field where verbal interaction costs lead to
high cognitive load (like rescue and guiding robots). However, the result cannot be
directly applied to human-robot interaction studies if verbal cues are used.
Our findings from the experiment may need further research to show their general ap-
plicability, however, our method validates the usefulness of the Possessed Robot method
in HRI studies because it can find different communication strategies in human-
nonhumanlike robot interaction. Such different strategies are hard to find in the previous
approaches that designed and implemented robot shapes and modalities according to
human-human interaction. Our results suggest that the robot-leading design may be op-
timal in the case of headless or head-fixed design robots, such as SmartPal and BIRON
[7][8]. It is also possible to assemble guidelines (what design is reasonable and what
design is unpredictable) using Possessed Robot method. These guidelines reduces useless
investment for development of robot's interface.
In future, we also need to discuss how to find optimal ways to connect the robot
I/O to human I/O. In this experiment, we started our simplified demonstration from
the viewpoint of decreased human design. Even if the human is a powerful problem
solver, we estimate that it is still difficult to handle additional input and output that do
not come to humans natively. We predict that studies about prosthesis and augmented
human technologies will expand the possibility of human scale.
8
Conclusions
We proposed an alternative approach called the Possessed Robot method to find a
robot's unique communication strategy. Previous robot shapes and modalities are
designed by imitating human-human interaction. This approach has restricted robot
design and behavior within the limitations of the possible human modalities. In our
approach, the human manipulator behaves as if she/he possesses the robot and finds
the optimal communication strategies based on the shape and modalities of the robot.
We implemented the Possessed Robot system (PoRoS) including a reconfigurable
body robot, an easier manipulation system, and a recording system to evaluate the
validity of our method. We evaluated the block-assembling task by PoRoS with turn-
ing on and off the modality of the robot head.
Synchronized motion significantly increased in the head-fixed design, and the ratio of
confirmatory behavior significantly decreased. Based on the results, we find an example
case for the optimal communication strategy in the head-fixed design. In this case, the
robot leads the users and the user follows the robot compared with the turn-taking com-
munication style in the humanoid condition. This result shows the feasibility of the Pos-
sessed Robot method in finding the appropriate strategy according to each robot design.
Acknowledgements.
This work was supported by the JST PRESTO program.
