Evaluation of pointing navigation interface for mobile robot with spherical vision system

In human robot interaction, intuitive interface is necessary. A specific interaction device, for instance, a joystick or a teaching pendant, is not usually intuitive and needs trainings for a general user. Instruction by gesture is one of the intuitive interfaces and a potential user does not need any training for showing a gesture. Pointing is one of the simplest gestures. Hibino et. al.[1] proposed a simple human pointing recognition system for a mobile robot that has an upward directed camera and recognizes human pointing and navigate itself to the place a user is pointing by simple visual feedback control. This paper shows improvement of the method and investigates the validity and usefulness of the proposed method with questionnaire investigations with the proposed and conventional user interfaces.