Human–human and human–robot co–manipulation: A biomechanical analysis of a joint carrying task

Assistive robots can support collaborative manipulation tasks such as carrying heavy or extended objects. As the human–human interaction is the basis for human–robot interaction, it is important to understand and quantify primarily haptic interaction. The subjects’ movements were recorded with a 3D motion capture system to determine spatio–temporal and upper and lower body kinematic parameters. The human–human interaction provided foundational data on human movement in collaborative manipulation tasks. The task with the robot revealed almost no changes in upper body kinematics, however, it was slower and showed adaptations of the human movement in the center of mass motion and in spatio–temporal parameters and lower body kinematics. This shows, that analyzing the interaction between humans and assistive robots focusing on human movement is essential for further developing assistive robots.