This paper describes the design and implementation of a testbed for facilitating the study of human-robot interactions (HRI). HRI has long been a part of robotics research, where humans were typically required to guide the robot task in progress and to ensure safe operation. The current state of human interaction with robots, versus simple “machines” (e.g. in manufacturing automation) is quite different. This called for the need to look into different interaction roles between humans and robots. Robots differ from simple machines in that they are mobile, some may be autonomous and hence not as predictable in their actions. To facilitate the research in this domain, the aim is to develop an easy to use and safe front-end human-robot system for human users to interact with physical mobile robots. This testbed provides different types of system configurations (i.e. one human to one robot, one human to multiple robots, etc.) and interfaces for conducting experiments under different HRI scenarios.Copyright © 2004 by ASME