Human-to-Robot Handovers

The track involves human-to-robot handovers performed by volunteers recruited by participating teams (qualification phase) and by volunteers from other teams (competition phase). Although humans are involved in the execution of the benchmark, the organisers do not conduct human-subject research and do not interact with participants directly.

All human interaction occurs within the participating teams' own institutions or at the competition venue.

Each team is fully responsible for ensuring that their local execution of the benchmark complies with:

• their institution's ethics or IRB/HREC requirements
• their country's human-subject research regulations
• informed consent standards
• data protection laws (e.g., GDPR, UK GDPR, CCPA, PIPL, etc.)

Teams must:

• obtain informed consent from all volunteers
• explain the purpose of the task and the nature of the recordings
• inform volunteers that participation is voluntary and can be withdrawn
• anonymise all recordings before submission
• retain consent documentation locally

The organisers do not collect or store consent forms.

Teams must ensure that volunteers understand:

• the purpose of the handover task
• that their hands will be recorded on video
• that videos will be shared with organisers for verification
• that videos will not be published without explicit consent
• that they may withdraw at any time
• that no personal data will be collected or stored

A lightweight consent template will be provided for teams to adapt to their local regulations.

To minimise ethical and legal risks, teams must ensure that:

• only hands are visible in the recordings
• no faces, voices, or identifying features appear
• backgrounds do not reveal personal or institutional information
• any accidental identifying content is blurred before submission

Teams may optionally provide coarse, non-identifying demographics for each volunteer:

• age group (e.g., 18-25, 26-35, 36-45, 46+)
• gender (male, female, non-binary, prefer_not_to_say)
• dominant hand (left, right, ambidextrous)
• experience level (novice, intermediate, expert)

Teams must not provide:

• exact age
• ethnicity
• health information
• biometric data
• occupation
• any sensitive or identifying attributes

Demographic data is used only for aggregate analysis and reproducibility.

During the on-site phase:

• volunteers are members of participating teams
• only hands will be recorded
• no personal data will be collected
• no demographic data will be requested
• a short verbal consent script will be used
• videos will be anonymised and deleted after verification

This phase does not constitute human-subject research.

The organisers:

• do not conduct human-subject research
• do not collect personal data
• do not store identifiable information
• do not analyse human behaviour
• only verify robot performance and task execution

All ethical responsibility for human participation lies with the participating teams.

Teams must confirm in their metadata JSON:

• local_ethics_compliance_confirmed
• informed_consent_obtained
• video_recording_consent
• video_sharing_consent
• video_publication_consent (optional)
• demographics_provided