Personal Space Invaders: Exploring Robot-initated Touch-based Gestures for Collaborative Robotics

Robots have been physically interacting with people for many years, but almost exclusively people initiate physical contact. Robots able to initiate touch will enable a large new category of human interaction, for example collaboration in noisy environments; and can help bridge cultural and language barriers. In this paper, we outline a research plan with the goal of developing a framework for robot-initiated physical communication, towards enabling robots to work and collaborate safely with people in close proximity. Physical touch-based interaction that is acceptable and understandable to all people is a challenging goal. Instead, we aim to develop robots that start with a repertoire of general touch behaviours which are adapted to individual people's preferences as each person interacts with the robot.