Motion control of a passive robot for dancing with a male dancer

A novel motion control algorithm was introduced to achieve dance between a man and a passive type robot (PDR), which can not move by itself, but can guarantee higher level of safety in the process of human-robot cooperation. Firstly, the characteristics of servo brake were analyzed, and the motion was divided into 8 states according to the kinematic model and control constraint condition. Then feasible brake torque set was obtained, which is a subset of whole brake torque, this makes control of passive type robot more complicated than general mobile robots. When the desired force is within this set, the brake torque for each wheel can be derived with static equation, otherwise, the assistance force applied by male dancer is employed. Finally, non-time based path tracking control was proposed for dance step tracking. The motion control algorithm was verified by two typical dance steps, and experimental results demonstrated the validity.