Design of a novel mobile assistive robot with haptic interaction

This paper presents a prototype of noval assistive robotic system, for which the user can interact with a mobile robot using a haptic interface, for senior and disabled people. The system consists of a nonholonomic PeopleBot mobile robot and a Phantom Omni haptic interface. Several technical problems related to the system are addressed and solved. Specifically, a nonlinear tracking algorithm is developed for the robot to follow the user. To preserve the safety operation of the haptic device, a safety control algorithm is applied. Besides, a simple haptic rendering algorithm is designed to generate the haptic feedback based on the position error. Experiments show that the user can guide the movement of the robot quite safely and smoothly using the haptic interface.