Teaching by touching: Interpretation of tactile instructions for motion development

Touch is an important means for communication among humans. Sport instructors or dance teachers often use touch to adjust students' postures in a very intuitive way. Using tactile instructions appears thus to be a very appealing modality for developing humanoid robot motions as well. Spontaneous interpretation of tactile instructions given by users reveals itself to be a complex task for artificial systems. This paper describes a proof of concept system for robot motion creation based on tactile interaction. The system is interesting for two reasons. Firstly, it shows the feasibility of using tactile instructions for motion development. Secondly, it can be used as a tool for studying the way humans intuitively use touch to communicate. This, in turn, will allow the development of better algorithms for predicting the meaning of tactile instructions. Results of a pilot experiment are discussed, and a first set of features of tactile communication, yielded by the analysis of the data collected, is identified.