DOI: 10.4121/d55393f4-f6b6-4076-86c1-7bf351f16787
title: Data underlying the publication: Fitts' List Revisited: An Empirical Study on Function Allocation in a Two-Agent Physical Human-Robot Collaborative Position/Force Task

description: This dataset accompanies the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters publication "Fitts' List Revisited: An Empirical Study on Function Allocation in a Two-Agent Physical Human-Robot Collaborative Position/Force Task" (Mol et al., 2025). For a more detailed overview of the experimental methods, the reader is referred to this publication. What follows is a summary.<br><strong>Study Overview:</strong> This study empirically investigates function allocation principles in physical Human-Robot Collaboration (pHRC) by testing whether Fitts' classical "MABA-MABA" framework applies to position/force control tasks in the context of pHRC. Twenty-six participants (N=26, ages 22-42, 4 female, 22 male) completed an abstract blending task under four experimental conditions in a within-subject design.<br><strong>Experimental Conditions:</strong><strong>HH</strong>: Human controls both position and force (manual baseline)<strong>HR</strong>: Human controls position, robot controls force<strong>RH</strong>: Robot controls position, human controls force<strong>RR</strong>: Robot controls both position and force (supervisory condition)<br><strong>Methods:</strong> Participants used a 7-DOF KUKA LBR iiwa 14 R820 robot equipped with a tool to remove simulated damage from a surface displayed on a horizontal monitor. The monitor surface was connected to a 6-DOF SCHUNK FTN-Delta SI-330-30 Force/Torque sensor to measure interaction forces. Each participant completed a familiarization and 5 trials per condition (4 + 20 trials total), with condition order counterbalanced using a Balanced Latin Square design. After each condition, participants completed three questionnaires: Van der Laan System Acceptance Scale, NASA-TLX Workload Assessment, and the newly developed Agentic Collaboration and Engagement Scale (ACES).<br><strong>Data Structure:</strong> The dataset contains:<strong>Raw sensor and robot data</strong> (ROS bag files): Organized in numbered folders (1-26) corresponding to each participant. Each bag file is named with timestamp, condition code (HH/HR/RH/RR), and trial number (_0 through _5, _0 being the familiarization).<strong>Participant_order.xlsx</strong>: Documents the counterbalanced presentation order of conditions for each participant.<strong>Impact_of_roles_in_HRC.xlsx</strong>: Contains all subjective questionnaire responses (Van der Laan, NASA-TLX, ACES) collected after each condition block for all participants.<br><strong>Ethical Approval:</strong> This study was approved by the Delft University of Technology Human Research Ethics Committee.All participants:Were physically healthy adults between the ages of 18-67 (working age)Provided written informed consent prior to participationWere informed they could withdraw at any time without consequence<br><strong>Funding:</strong> This work was supported by the BrightSky project, funded by the R&D Mobiliteitsfonds from the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) and commissioned by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy.