Evaluation of Impression Difference of a Domestic Mobile Manipulator with Autonomous and/or Remote Control in Fetch-and-Carry Tasks
Takashi Yamamoto, Hiroaki Yaguchi, Shohei Kato, Hiroyuki Okada
TL;DR
This paper investigates how the presence of a remote operator, autonomous capabilities, or a combination (autonomous remote control) affects user impressions of a domestic mobile manipulator during fetch-and-carry tasks. It formalizes a User–Robot–Operator triad and compares three control modes using an HS R in a World Robot Summit–compliant field, employing semantic differential and ranking analyses. The findings show that higher autonomy yields greater affinity, with M2 (autonomous) and M3 (autonomous remote control) outperforming M1 (remote control), and reveal nuanced effects on sense of security and operator presence. The work provides empirical guidance for designing human-in-the-loop mobile manipulation systems in domestic settings and supports pursuing autonomous remote-control configurations to balance task performance with social acceptance.
Abstract
A single service robot can present two distinct agencies: its onboard autonomy and an operator-mediated agency, yet users experience them through one physical body. We formalize this dual-agency structure as a User-Robot-Operator triad in an autonomous remote-control setting that combines autonomous execution with remote human support. Prior to the recent surge of language-based and multimodal interfaces, we developed and evaluated an early-stage prototype in 2020 that combined natural-language text chat with freehand sketch annotations over the robot's live camera view to support remote intervention. We evaluated three modes - autonomous, remote, and hybrid - in controlled fetch-and-carry tasks using a domestic mobile manipulator (HSR) on a World Robot Summit 2020 rule-compliant test field. The results show systematic mode-dependent differences in user-rated affinity and additional insights on perceived security, indicating that switching or blending agency within one robot measurably shapes human impressions. These findings provide empirical guidance for designing human-in-the-loop mobile manipulation in domestic physical tasks.