Understanding and communicating intentions in human-robot interaction

Abstract

This thesis is about the collaboration and interaction between a robot and a human agent. The goal is to use the robot as a coworker, by implementing the premises of an interaction system that would make the interaction as natural as possible. This involves that the robot has a vision system that allows understanding of the intentions of the human. This thesis work is intended to be part of a larger project aimed at extending the competences of the programmable industrial robot, Baxter, made by Rethink Robotics. Due to the limited vision abilities of this robot, a Kinect camera is added on the top of its head. This thesis covers human gestures recognition through the Kinect data and robot reactions to these gestures through visual feedback and actions.