Modeling human reaching phase in human-human object handover with application in robot-human handover

In robot to human object handover, the configuration (position and orientation) in which the object is transferred should be selected so that the handover is safe and comfortable for the human. The trajectory on which the robot moves the object to the point of transfer should be also selected so that the robot intention is clear and the handover feels natural to the human. In this paper, we propose to select the configuration for the transfer and the trajectory to reach this configuration based on what humans do in human-human handovers. We describe a human study designed to investigate the human-human handover and propose an ergonomic model that can predict object transfer position observed in the study. A human-robot experiment is then conducted that shows that the proposed model generates transfer positions that match the preferred height and distance relative to the human.