Teaching by touching: An intuitive method for development of humanoid robot motions

Abstract

This paper investigates touching as a natural way for humans to communicate with robots. In particular we developed a system to edit motions of a small humanoid robot by touching its body parts. This interface has two purposes: it allows the user to develop robot motions in a very intuitive way, and it allows us to collect data useful for studying the characteristics of touching as a means of communication. Experimental results confirm the interface's ease of use for inexpert users, and analysis of the data collected during human-robot teaching episodes has yielded several useful insights.