This monograph presents innovative research regarding the body
experience of human individuals who are using assistive robotic devices
such as wearable robots or teleoperation systems. The focus is set on
human-in-the-loop experiments that help to empirically evaluate how
users experience devices. Moreover, these experiments allow for further
examination of the underlying mechanisms of body experience through
extending existing psychological paradigms, e.g., by disentangling
tactile feedback from contacts.
Besides reporting and discussing psychological examinations, the
influence of various aspects of engineering design is investigated,
e.g., different implementations of haptic interfaces or robot control.
As haptics are of paramount importance in this tight type of human-robot
interaction, it is explored with respect to modality as well as temporal
and spatial effects.
The first part of the book motivates the research topic and gives an
in-depth analysis of the experimental requirements. The second and third
part present experimental designs and studies of human-robot body
experience regarding the upper and lower limbs as well as cognitive
models to predict them. The fourth part discusses a multitude of design
considerations and provides directions to guide future research on
bidirectional human-machine interfaces and non-functional haptic
feedback.
