Mutual entrainment based human-robot communication field-paradigm shift from “human interface” to “communication field”

A mutual entrainment based communication field is proposed as a new communication paradigm to realize a human-robot collaboration system. The most interesting ability of this field is to spontaneously generate a control information field for autonomous coordination including both human and robotic dynamics. Applying it to the coordinative walking process between human and robotic system as an example, the authors show that the control information field indicating functional relationship between human and robot is self-organized in the communication field. It is encoded on the spatial phase pattern generated by the mutual entrainment between walking rhythms. Interpreting this information, each subsystem would be able to coordinately behave as one whole system. This result suggests that the essence of communication is not in any definite and separated order as is seen in conventional human interfaces but in the ability to self-organize flexible and integrated order in the communication field