Haptic Interaction Design for Physical Contact Between a Wearable Robot and the User

摘要

In this paper, we propose a framework for a bidirectional haptic interaction system for a wearable robot as an anthropomorphic communication method. Humans have various ways to communicate with others. One of them is physical contact. To build intimate or familiar engagement between the robot and our focused users such as elderly people, children, and care receivers, we focused on bidirectional physical contact with emotional expression. The system adopts our prototype for a wearable robot that creates haptic stimuli with kinetic motions, as though it pats, seizes, or pulls the user's clothes on her/his arm. Our discussion focuses on the interaction design of the robot with a stepwise change inthe habituation that affects the internal state of the user and the user's interpretation of the physical contact and then we tentatively establish patterns for the robot's physical contact.