A trouble shared is a trouble halved — Usability measures for Human-Robot Collaboration

Changing industrial, social, and legal situations cause a rethinking of novel production systems. One possible approach is to assist the human workers' power. By application of collaborating robots, weaknesses can be compensated by the strengths of the interacting partner using haptic shared control. To ensure acceptance and well-being on the human side, which can be seen as a condition for high performance, usability of the collaborative systems has to be maximized. This study aims to evaluate usability measures for haptic Human-Robot Collaboration in horizontal manipulation tasks (HMT). Results show significant differences and strong effects for accuracy (standard deviation lateral position, SDLP) and efficiency (time to task completion, TTC) measures in a Human Dyad experiment using a Human-Human Collaboration (HHC) method.