Dynamic control for robot-human collaboration

This paper proposes a new robotic system, which consists of multiple robots and executes a task in cooperation with humans. The authors consider a task in which the robots and humans manipulate an object in coordination. The authors assume that no interactions occur among robots and humans, that is, robots and humans have interactions with each other only through the object. The authors also assume that the humans are manipulating the object around a point fixed to the object. Under these assumptions, the authors design a controller for each robot around the point so that the object has a prescribed passive dynamics around the point. The stability of the resultant system is assured based on Popov's hyper stability theorem under the assumption that the passivity conditions for the humans are satisfied. The resultant control algorithm is applied to an experimental system, which consists of two industrial manipulators and a human. The results illustrate the proposed control algorithm.<>