Rami YOUNES

This work investigates human-robot interaction dynamics by examining how verbal and co-verbal communication affect collaborative task execution. We equip the robot with hierarchical planning and decision-making abilities. This enables the robot to break down tasks into manageable subtasks, naming them as it progresses through its planned actions.

In our investigation, we focus on a specific scenario where the human participant is engaged in object manipulations, similar to those encountered in assembly tasks, with an industrial robot orchestrating the plan. Central to our approach is the structuring and parameterization of the verbalization space. This involves careful selection of semantic, syntactic, and lexical elements to articulate the elementary manipulations and introduce subtasks. To achieve this, we devised a new crowdsourcing methodology tailored to our research needs.

Subsequently, we conduct in-person experiments to empirically evaluate the impact of both verbal and co-verbal communication, particularly through deictic arm gestures, on task performance. Our findings underscore the significance of communication modalities in enhancing collaborative task execution within human-robot interactions.