Human-robot communication with hand-clapping language (Consideration from Communication Impedance Matching Viewpoint)

Conventionally, human robot communication and robot-robot communication are dealt with in different manners in general. From the viewpoint of cooperation between human staff and robots as a heterogeneous group, however, it is natural and desirable that all of the communication within the group is performed based on a uniform communication manner. In this study, we deal with a communication method that can be adopted for both human-robot and robot-robot communication. We discuss a communication style by means of simple sound such as the hand-clapping. A communication language is introduced; the configuration of syllables, the words and their parts of speech and the syntax are discussed and designed from a general point of view. A perceptibility assessment is performed for the syllables. A preliminary experimental study is performed and the feasibility of the proposed human-robot communication style is examined. The concept of communication impedance matching is introduced as an analogy of the electric impedance matching. The feasibility of the proposed communication method is also discussed from this point of view. © 2008 Academy Publisher.