Uniform vs. Lognormal Kinematics in Robots: Perceptual Preferences for Robotic Movements

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper mainly considers the human's perceptual preference for the motion state of the robot in the process of human-robot cooperation. I am very interested in the topic of the paper, but there are some mistakes and insufficient arguments in the manuscript. So, in its present form, I don't think it's acceptable. I suggest the author revise it in light of the following comments.

-          There is an error in the labeling of the references in the manuscript. In the text, the reference is not marked with a number but in the form of a question mark, such as [?], which will cause certain difficulties for readers to read the manuscript and understand the content, and it is impossible to accurately judge. The novelty of the research content and its relationship to other relevant research.

-          The manuscript mentions “In these robots, an under-considered but important issue is related to movement.” in the abstract, but does not specify what the question refers to, and the sentence appears to be incomplete.

-          The meaning of some English abbreviations is not explained in the manuscript, such as “TFAC”, etc.

-          In addition to the evaluation of volunteers, are there any objective evaluation indicators for the evaluation indicators of the robot’s motion state in the manuscript? Why are metrics like motion accuracy or safety not considered?

-          I think the evaluation of volunteers should be diversified, instead of taking “comfortable” as the only criterion for the robot’s motion state, more focused evaluation indicators should be summarized based on the questionnaire.

-          The author needs to disclose the content of the questionnaire and conduct a simple statistical analysis of the survey results.

-          What are the improvements of forward kinematics and inverse kinematics in the manuscript?

-          Why choose the ABB IRB120 robot for experiments and what characteristics does it have to represent all types of robots?

-          The log-normal model is used in the manuscript to make the industrial robot synthesize the human-like motion speed. Does it affect the quality of the industrial tasks of the industrial robot itself?

-          The manuscript should further address the need to require that the speed state of an industrial robot needs to be adjusted to the perceptual preferences of human supervisors, since industrial robots are not developed and researched for sensory pleasure.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The submitted manuscript titled  Uniform vs. lognormal kinematics in robots: perceptual preferences for robotic movements deals with Collaborative robots or cobots interact with humans in a common work environment. This topic is relevant to  development of the industry 4.0 .

The proposed  manuscript deals with whether humans prefer a robot moving in a human or in a robotic fashion differentiating  the movement performed by an industrial robotic arm from that performed by a human one.

The authors  done three tests  to study the subjects’ preference when seeing both movements, and another analyzed the same when interacting with the robot by touching its ends with their fingers.

In summary the authors dealt with Lognormal speed profile; Constant speed profile; Robot kinematic; Human-Robot Interaction. The implementation in  known  ABB IRB120 industrial robot  was done  and it was verified using  pertinent sensors.

The proposed manuscript was described with success,  in sections  including the discussion  of the  obtained data and the  concluding remarks were  supported by the obtained results.

 

The paper is well written,  but I have suggestions to improve its scientific quality :

 

 The authors must include  some remarks on the dynamical aspects  to complement the study pf the kinematics and   mention the influence of parametric errors modeling and software error compensation  on the  proposed approach .The state of the art including  dynamics aspects could be  mentioned by the  authors

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Although the authors have made some changes to the manuscript based on the comments, I think it is difficult to accept in the current form of the manuscript and that the authors do not respond directly to some of the items in the comments.

1.      In line 327 of the manuscript, " Figure B1 " is of unknown significance and this numbered figure is not available in the manuscript.

2.      I think it is not comprehensive to only use "comfortable" as the evaluation standard. The human perception of "comfortable" in the speed of the mechanical arm may come from different factors. The sense of security, timing of cooperation, or improvement of task completion efficiency will give the human side in human-computer cooperation a sense of "comfortable". Therefore, it cannot explain the nature of the problem only to use binary selection as the evaluation index. The evaluation of the research results in the manuscript is not enough to illustrate its application value.

3.      The author still did not disclose the design content of the questionnaire in the revised manuscript. The content of the questionnaire in which volunteers were asked for answers was an important means to determine the conclusion of the manuscript. It was difficult to determine the value of the experimental results if the content of the questionnaire was not disclosed.

4.      The reason why industrial robots are used to replace manpower is that on the one hand, they can liberate manpower, and on the other hand, they can accomplish many tasks that are difficult for human beings to accomplish. In the response, the author asked, "But in this area would affect something if that movement were human? ". Let me give an example here. For example, in the spraying operation, the industrial robot needs to move forward at an even speed to ensure the uniform thickness and color of the spraying, but it is difficult to achieve this if it is based on the state of human motion. In addition, in some occasions with high speed status and high trajectory accuracy, there are certain hidden dangers in using the human motion status mentioned in the manuscript to complete.

5.      The author's response mentioned that the research purpose of the manuscript is human-computer interaction, but the experimental case given in the manuscript is an industrial robot. Therefore, even if human feelings need to be considered in human-computer collaborative tasks, it is difficult to be accepted if the quality of industrial tasks is reduced.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper is acceptable as is in its updated format 

Author Response

The paper is ok.

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

I think some problems have been explained in the latest version of the manuscript, which I think is acceptable.