Identifying nonverbal cues for automated human-robot turn-taking

Nonverbal communication cues play an important role in human-human interaction and are expected to take a similar role in human-robot collaboration. In current industrial practice, human-robot turn-taking is explicitly human controlled, via a command channel such as switch or button. However, such a master-slave approach does not permit collaborative interaction, and requires the human to focus on both controlling the robot´s behavior and on the task, thereby affecting overall performance. In this paper, implicit, nonverbal communication cues are examined as a non-explicit communication channel during a turn-taking task context. The aim of this study is to characterize the types and frequencies of nonverbal cues important to regulating turn taking during an assembly-task-type collaboration. This analysis will guide the selection of cues that can be expressed by the robot as implicit user inputs while human and robot complete a shared task.