Developing Robot Motions by Simulated Touch Sensors

Touch is a very powerful but not much studied communication mean in human-robot interaction. Nonetheless many robots are not equipped with touch sensors, because it is often difficult to place such sensors over the robot surface or simply because the main task of the robot does not require them. We propose an approach that allows developing motions for a real humanoid robot by touching its 3D representation. This simulated counterpart can be equipped with touch sensors not physically available and allows the user to interact with a robot moving in slow-play, which is not possible in real world due to the changes in the dynamics. The developed interface, employing simulated touch sensors, allows inexperienced users to program robot movements in an intuitive way without any modification of the robot’s hardware. Thanks to this tool we can also study how humans employ touch for communication. We then report how simulation can be used to study user dependence of touch instructions assuring all the subjects to be in exactly the same conditions.