[2203.08343] Design and Evaluation of an Augmented Reality Head-Mounted Display Interface for Human Robot Teams Collaborating in Physically Shared Manufacturing Tasks

We provide an experimental evaluation of a wearable augmented reality (AR)
system we have developed for human-robot teams working on tasks requiring
collaboration in shared physical workspace. Recent advances in AR technology
have facilitated the development of more intuitive user interfaces for many
human-robot interaction applications. While it has been anticipated that AR can
provided a more intuitive interface to robot assistants helping human workers
in various manufacturing scenarios, existing studies in robotics have been
largely limited to teleoperation and programming. Industry 5.0 envisions
cooperation between human and robot working in teams. Indeed, there exist many
industrial task that can benefit from human-robot collaboration. A prime
example is high-value composite manufacturing. Working with our industry
partner towards this example application, we evaluated our AR interface design
for shared physical workspace collaboration in human-robot teams. We conducted
a multi-dimensional analysis of our interface using establish metrics. Results
from our user study (n=26) show that subjectively, the AR interface feels more
novel and a standard joystick interface feels more dependable to users.
However, the AR interface was found to reduce physical demand and task
completion time, while increasing robot utilization. Furthermore, user’s
freedom of choice to collaborate with the robot may also affect the perceived
usability of the system.