The Importance of Feedback for Object Hand-Overs Between Human and Robot

Robot systems will soon be able to hand over objects to humans as well as receive objects from humans in a robust way. From an ergonomics point of view, it is required to evaluate those robot systems and their interactions with humans based on appropriate parameters and design them accordingly. Therefore, we conducted an experiment with human-to-human hand-overs. The aim was to analyze different conditions of hand-overs that occur in our daily life such as different spatial direction, cups with varying filling quantities and varying states of perception of the receiving person. It was shown that cups with a higher filling level lead to a significantly higher duration of the interaction phase than cups with a lower filling level. Additionally, perceptual impairment of the receiver and thereby a lack of feedback led to a higher duration of the interaction phase.