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In this paper, an on-line path planner for an industrial manipulator is presented. The proposed control architecture is capable of driving the manipulator in its environment while avoiding collisions. Potential fields are used in order to control the joint velocities in such a way that the robot avoids the obstacles. We also propose a new weighted pseudoinverse matrix that improves the manipulator capability of finding feasible paths to move around obstacles and pass through narrow corridors without relying on the manipulator dynamic model. The proposed technique fits to both redundant and non-redundant manipulators. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed solution.

We investigated the coordination between two individuals during object handovers. Ten participants (eight males, two females; 26.0 ± 5.0 years, 72.7 ± 13.5 kg, 1.73 ± 0.8 m) arranged in pairs (a giver and a receiver), passed an object from the giver to the receiver at a self-selected speed. A motion capture system quantified the giver and the receiver's motion simultaneously. Three interpersonal distances and three object masses were chosen to study the handover. We hypothesized that (a) the handover occurs at half of the interpersonal distance between the giver and receiver and (b) the handover height depends on the objects' mass. Taken together, our results show that the handover strongly depends on the interpersonal distance between the giver and receiver, while object mass related only to handover duration.