  During co-manipulation involving humans and robots, it is necessary to base
robot controllers on human behaviors to achieve comfortable and coordinated
movement between the human-robot dyad. In this paper, we describe an experiment
between human-human dyads and we record the force and motion data as the
leader-follower dyads moved in translation and rotation. The force/motion data
was then analyzed for patterns found during lateral translation only. For
extended objects, lateral translation and in-place rotation are ambiguous, but
this paper determines a way to characterize lateral translation triggers for
future use in human-robot interaction. The study has 4 main results. First,
interaction forces are apparent and necessary for co-manipulation. Second,
minimum-jerk trajectories are found in the lateral direction only for lateral
movement. Third, the beginning of a lateral movement is characterized by
distinct force triggers by the leader. Last, there are different metrics that
can be attributed to determine which dyads moved most effectively in the
lateral direction.

Robotics