Demonstrating Cloth Folding to Robots: Design and Evaluation of a 2D and a 3D User Interface
This work addresses the challenge of designing user interfaces for human-robot interaction in deformable object manipulation, which is incremental as it builds on existing demonstration methods.
The study tackled the problem of collecting human demonstration data for cloth folding by robots, proposing a 2D mouse-based and a 3D augmented reality interface; results showed the 3D interface improved task understanding, the 2D interface was better for repetition, and fold previews enhanced efficiency, prediction accuracy, and user satisfaction.
An appropriate user interface to collect human demonstration data for deformable object manipulation has been mostly overlooked in the literature. We present an interaction design for demonstrating cloth folding to robots. Users choose pick and place points on the cloth and can preview a visualization of a simulated cloth before real-robot execution. Two interfaces are proposed: A 2D display-and-mouse interface where points are placed by clicking on an image of the cloth, and a 3D Augmented Reality interface where the chosen points are placed by hand gestures. We conduct a user study with 18 participants, in which each user completed two sequential folds to achieve a cloth goal shape. Results show that while both interfaces were acceptable, the 3D interface was found to be more suitable for understanding the task, and the 2D interface suitable for repetition. Results also found that fold previews improve three key metrics: task efficiency, the ability to predict the final shape of the cloth and overall user satisfaction.