To achieve a seamless human-robot collaboration, it is crucial that robots express their intentions without perturbating or interrupting the task that a human partner is performing at that moment. Although it has not received much attention so far, this issue is important when robots assist humans in physical and manipulation tasks. The main question addressed here is whether there is a more appropriate time to inform a human partner that a robot is requesting to pass them an object. This question is posed in a reference scenario where human individuals are involved in a continuous pick-and-place task that cannot be interrupted. Our findings showed that providing a cue at the beginning of a reach-to-grasp movement could severely interfere with the ongoing human action, increasing the number of errors made by humans, slowing down and degrading the smoothness of their arm movement, and deflecting their gaze. These disruptive interferences strongly decreased, until they disappeared, when the robot provided the cue to the human partners shortly after the participants picked up an object, identifying this as the best signaling timing. The results of this work showed how the signaling timing may have a decisive influence on the performances of the human-robot teamwork and contribute to understanding the mechanisms underpinning the phenomenon of cognitive-motor interference in humans.

中文翻译：

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人机协同操作中信号时序的相关性

为了实现无缝的人机协作，机器人表达他们的意图而不会干扰或中断人类伙伴当时正在执行的任务至关重要。虽然到目前为止还没有受到太多关注，但当机器人协助人类完成身体和操作任务时，这个问题很重要。这里解决的主要问题是是否有更合适的时间来通知人类伙伴机器人正在请求向他们传递物体。这个问题是在一个参考场景中提出的，在这个场景中，人类个体参与了一个无法中断的连续取放任务。我们的研究结果表明，在伸手可及的动作开始时提供提示可能会严重干扰正在进行的人类行动，增加人类犯错的数量，减慢并降低他们手臂运动的流畅度，并转移他们的视线。这些破坏性干扰大大减少，直到它们消失，当机器人在参与者拿起物体后不久向人类伙伴提供提示时，将其确定为最佳信号时机。这项工作的结果表明，信号时间如何可能对人机团队合作的表现产生决定性影响，并有助于理解支撑人类认知运动干扰现象的机制。