Development of Human Motion Detecting Device for Human-Machine Interface

This paper presents the development of a human-robot interface and a modified impedance controller, which generate robot motion which is appropriate for a human-robot interaction. The proposed control system enables a human operator to interact with the robot intuitively and stably. The proposed interface can simultaneously detect relative motion data as well as force data between the human operator and the robot during a human-robot interaction. The modified impedance controller, which is designed to handle not only the relative motion data but force data as well, generates familiar and intuitive motion for the human operator. In addition, the proposed interface mechanism, which provides an adequate stiffness, improves the stability of the control system. In order to confirm that the effectiveness of the proposed system, a supporting human operator's forearm experiment is carried out. Experimental results illustrate that the proposed interface and the proposed controller are effective for the human-robot interaction.