Bio-inspired plastic controller for a robot arm to shake hand with human

The future coexistence of humanoid robots and human being presuppose knowledge of cognitive mechanisms involved in interpersonal human physical and social interactions. The act of a handshake is an example of a physical interpersonal interaction that plays an important social role because it is based on physical and social couplings that lead to synchronization of motion. Studying handshake for robotics is interesting as it can expand the behavioral properties of robots for interaction with a human being in a more natural way. Previous experiments have shown that the phase of physical contact which contains hands tightening initiates a phenomenon of mutual synchrony. Considering the biological rhythmic nature of handshake phenomenon, a robot controller inspired by rhythmic structures of the human motor nervous system is proposed in this paper. The model is based on coupled rhythmic neurons, constituting a central pattern generator with learning mechanisms for the frequency of the movement perceived during the interaction. Experiments with a robot arm show that it is possible for the robot to learn to synchronize its rhythm with the human rhythms imposed during the handshake.