Changing shape

Abstract

Polymorphic, or shape-shifting, robots can normally tackle more types of tasks than non-polymorphic robots due to their flexible morphology. Their versatility adds to the challenge of designing a human interface, however. To investigate the utility of providing awareness information about the robot's physical configuration (or "pose"), we performed a within-subjects experiment with presence or absence of pose information being the independent variable. We found that participants were more likely to tip the robot or have it ride up on obstacles when they used the display that lacked pose information and also more likely to move the robot to the highest position to become oriented. There was no significant difference in the number of times that participants bumped into obstacles, however, indicating that having more awareness of the robot's state does not affect awareness of the robots' immediate surroundings. Participants thought the display with pose information was easier to use, helped their performance and was more enjoyable than having no pose information. Future research directions point toward providing recommendations to robot operators for which pose they should change to given the terrain to be traversed.