Empowering Robots for Object Handovers

This work investigates the collaborative task of object handovers between a human and a robot, a central aspect of human-robot collaboration. Our research contributes along three directions: first, designing robot controllers for previously unexplored human-robot handover scenarios; second, investigating gaze behaviors of a receiver in human-to-human and human-to-robot handovers; and third, investigating human behavior in bimanual and multiple sequential human-to-human handovers. Our contributions could help enable robots perform the complex but essential tasks of handing over objects to and receiving objects from humans.