The Dance of Togetherness: Bachata-Inspired Haptic Control for Intimate Human-Robot Teaming

Abstract

Bachata, a partner dance built on close coordination and continuous non-verbal exchange, offers a useful model for understanding how two agents can move, adapt, and make decisions together. Inspired by this embodied interaction, this work introduces The Dance of Togetherness, a physical human-robot teaming (HRT) framework based on the relational dynamics of bachata. Instead of relying on rigid and transactional control, the framework incorporates mutual attunement, adaptive guidance, and shared intent. These principles are formalised through a scalar connection weight that continuously adjusts the robot’s role between leading and yielding. Its evolution is governed by an embrace negotiation law driven by haptic resonance and the phase of the shared motion. Four bachata-inspired scenarios, the Abrazo, Giro, Oleada, and Di’alogo, are evaluated through control time-series analyses. Simulation results show faster convergence, smoother motion, and stronger synchronisation than rigid-control baselines, highlighting dance-inspired interaction as a rigorous and expressive foundation for adaptive HRT.