Object transportation task by a human and a mobile robot

Abstract

This paper addresses the human-robot cooperation problem on object transportation tasks, particularly when a human grasps one side of the object while the other extremity is carried by the robot. The robot is equipped with a pair of infrared sensors used to obtain the load's status and apply it as a feedback to accomplish a specific task. A nonlinear controller is proposed to allow the robot to perform coordinated movements and thus help a human to carry an object from an initial position to a final goal with a defined position and orientation. The controller is proved to be asymptotically stable at the equilibrium point, which guarantees the accomplishment of the task. In contrast to other methods, the approach presented in this paper does not use either force or visual information to estimate the status of the robot and the object. In order to validate the proposed method some experiments are shown.

Design of Robotic Human Assistance Systems Using a Mobile Manipulator

“…Many researchers have studied different ways to assist human beings using different kinds of robotic systems. Pereira et al used a mobile robot to help humans perform object transportation tasks [3]. Wang et al did the same task using a passive mobile robot and taking torque analysis into account [4].…”