Wearable computing to enable robot microinteractions

Abstract

High-level control of mobile robots currently requires use of a personal computer and traditional graphical user interface in the vast majority of cases. Such interfaces are not natural and frequently poorly suited to interacting with robots when tasking the robot to perform very short interactions requiring only brief commands. This is a problem that is especially acute for persons with disabilities. New technologies, such as Google Glass provide a variety of high quality sensors and an unobtrusive display which allows users to have a powerful robot control interface with them at all times. In this paper we present a system which provides the basic elements required in order for a user to interact with a robot using Glass. We also informally evaluate Glass as an input device, and present several examples of applications that this interface enables.