Haptic display is the process of applying forces to a human "observer" giving the sensation of touching and interacting with real physical objects. Touch is unique among the senses because it allows simultaneous exploration and manipulation of an environment. A haptic display system has three main components. The first is the haptic interface, or display device - generally some type of electro-mechanical system able to exert controllable forces on the user with one or more degrees of freedom. The second is the object model - a mathematical representation of the object containing its shape and other properties related to the way it feels. The third component, the haptic rendering algorithm, joins the first two components to compute, in real time, the model-based forces to give the user the sensation of touching the simulated objects. This paper focuses on a new haptic rendering algorithm for generating convincing interaction forces for objects modeled as rigid polyhedra (Fig. 1). We cre...

Interruptions can cause people to make mistakes or errors during human--computer interaction (HCI). Interruptions occur as an unavoidable side-effect of some important kinds of human computer-based activities, for example, (a) constantly monitor for unscheduled changes in information environments, (b) supervise background autonomous services, and (c) intermittently collaborate and communicate with other people. Fortunately, people have powerful innate cognitive abilities that they can potentially leverage to manage multiple concurrent activities if they have specific kinds of control and interaction support. There is great opportunity, therefore, for user-interface design to increase people's ability to successfully handle interruptions, and prevent expensive errors. The literature contains very little concrete design wisdom about how to solve the interruption problems in user interfaces (UIs). Coordination support, however, is identified as a most important design topic. This article presents the results of an empirical investigation to compare basic design solutions for coordinating human interruption in computer -based multitasks. A theory-based taxonomy of human interruption is used

At first glance it seems absurd that busy people doing important jobs should want their computers to interrupt them. Interruptions are disruptive and people need to concentrate to make good decisions. However, successful job performance also frequently depends on people's abilities to (a) constantly monitor their dynamically changing information environments, (b) collaborate and communicate with other people in the system, and (c) supervise background autonomous services. These critical abilities can require people to simultaneously query a large set of information sources, continuously monitor for important events, and respond to and communicate with other human operators. Automated monitoring

The introduction of a force-feedback mouse, which provides high fidelity tactile cues via force output, may represent a long-awaited technological breakthrough in pointing device designs. However, there have been few studies examining the benefits of force-feedback for the desktop computer human interface. Ten adults performed eighty steering tasks, where the participants moved the cursor through a small tunnel with varying indices of difficulty using a conventional and force-feedback mouse. For the force-feedback condition, the mouse displayed force that pulled the cursor to the center of the tunnel. The tasks required both horizontal and vertical screen movements of the cursor. Movement times were on average 52 percent faster during the force-feedback condition when compared to the conventional mouse. Furthermore, for the conventional mouse vertical movements required more time to complete than horizontal screen movements. Another ten adults completed a combined steering and targeting task, where the participants navigated through a tunnel and then clicked a small box at the end of the tunnel. Again, forcefeedback improved times to complete the task. Although movement times were slower than the pure steering task, the steering index of difficulty dominated the steeringtargeting relationship. These results further support that human computer interfaces benefit from the additional sensory input of tactile cues to the human user.

Telerobotic systems have traditionally been designed and operated from a human point of view. Though this approach suffices for some domains, it is clearly sub-optimal for tasks such as operating multiple vehicles or controlling planetary rovers. Thus, I believe it is worthwhile to examine a new teleoperation approach: collaborative control. In this robot-centric model, instead of the human always being "in charge", the robot works as a peer and makes requests of the human. In other words, the human is treated as an imprecise, limited source of planning and information, just like sensors and maps and other noisy modules. To examine the numerous human-machine interaction and system design issues raised by this new approach, I propose to build a vehicle teleoperation system based on collaborative control. In my research, I will show how this approach enables efficient teleoperation and optimizes use of human resources.

In this study, we investigated people's relationships with AIBO, a robotic pet, through 6,438 spontaneous postings in online AIBO discussion forums. Results showed that AIBO psychologically engaged this group of participants, particularly by drawing forth conceptions of technological essences (75%), life-like essences (49%), mental states (60%), and social rapport (59%). However, participants seldom attributed moral standing to AIBO (e.g., that AIBO deserves respect, has rights, or can be held morally accountable for action). Our discussion focuses on how robotic pets (now and in the future) may (a) challenge traditional boundaries (e.g. between who or what can possess feelings), (b) extend our conceptions of self, companionship, and community, and (c) begin to replace interactions with live pets. We also discuss a concern that people in general, and children in particular, may fall prey to accepting robotic pets without the moral responsibilities (and moral developmental outcomes) that real, reciprocal companionship and cooperation involves. This research contributes to a growing literature on the human-robotic relationship.

MD This paper describes an effort to identify common metrics for task-oriented human-robot interaction (HRI). We begin by discussing the need for a toolkit of HRI metrics. We then describe the framework of our work and identify important biasing factors that must be taken into consideration. Finally, we present suggested common metrics for standardization and a case study. Preparation of a larger, more detailed toolkit is in progress.

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The ability of robots to autonomously perform tasks is increasing. More autonomy in robots means that the human managing the robot may have available free time. It is desirable to use this free time productively, and a current trend is to use this available free time to manage multiple robots. We present the notion of neglect tolerance as a means for determining how robot autonomy and interface design determine how free time can be used to support multitasking, in general, and multirobot teams, in particular. We use neglect tolerance to 1) identify the maximum number of robots that can be managed; 2) identify feasible configurations of multirobot teams; and 3) predict performance of multirobot teams under certain independence assumptions. We present a measurement methodology, based on a secondary task paradigm, for obtaining neglect tolerance values that allow a human to balance workload with robot performance.

This paper formulates analysis in terms of spatial interest functions and consensus regions, and presents system architecture, interface, and algorithms for processing voting data