Towards an intuitive interface for instructing robots handling tasks based on verbalized physical effects

A long-term goal in current robotic research is the development of intuitive interfaces for human-robot interaction. Here, one field of application are object manipulation tasks. Such tasks consist of grasping, moving, and placing objects [1]. In this work, we focus on the subtask of moving an object, which is also called the handling of the object. We present a method for the intuitive instruction of handling tasks through verbal commands and the execution based on verbalized physical effects. We define a set of principal physical effects and describe how a physical effect can be verbalized. Furthermore, we indicate how verbal parameters can qualitatively be transformed into robot control parameters using physics. At last, we show in a user study, that the proposed method is feasible for the intuitive instruction of handling tasks to a robot system.