Understanding movements of hand-over between two persons to improve humanoid robot systems

To enable personal robots to operate in human spaces, it is necessary that robots support everyday tasks like handing over an object. Studies show that robots have to move and behave human-like, to improve social acceptance. Therefore, it is necessary to study and model human movements. This paper studies and analyses the movements of arms during hand-over between two persons in order to extract the characteristic features (elementary movements of joints, duration, angular and linear velocities, etc.). In the present study, we are using inertial measurement units with 6-axis (gyroscope and accelerometer) on wrist, elbow and shoulder to measure the movements and evaluate them. Our results show a general movement pattern for hand-overs between humans with two variants of twisting the elbow. The results of our study provide a basis for developing a human-like handover controller for humanoid robot systems or human like manipulators.