Human-Robot Handover

A robot passing an object to a person, or taking one from a person's hand.

Human-robot handover covers two directions: the robot giving an object to a person, or the robot receiving one from a person. A 2020 survey by Ortenzi and colleagues splits the interaction into two phases: a pre-handover phase, where giver and receiver implicitly agree on where and when the exchange happens, and the physical transfer phase, which runs from the receiver first touching the object to the giver fully releasing it. The hard parts are predicting the human's motion, planning an arm trajectory, choosing a grasp position that is easy for the other party to take hold of, and judging when to let go from the forces felt — release too early and the object drops, too late and it gets yanked. It is one of the most common forms of physical interaction in home service, caregiving, and human-robot collaboration in factories.

ExampleA caregiving robot hands a cup of water to an elderly person seated on a bed: it brings the cup close with the handle facing them, and releases its grip only once it feels them take hold and pull back.

Also called

Object Handover, Robot-to-Human Handover, Human-to-Robot Handover

Related

Human-Robot Collaboration · Physical Human-Robot Interaction · Human-Robot Interaction · Grasping · Task-Oriented Grasping · Force Control

Sources

Object Handovers: a Review for Robotics (Ortenzi et al.)