A Preliminary Study of a Control Framework for Forearm Contact During Robot Navigation

Efficient navigation in a congested environment is immensely difficult for the current state-of-the-art mobile robots owing to the challenges related to both sensing and actuation. Consequently, conventional approaches in mobile robotics research prioritize safety by slowing down or stopping robot's movement under challenging circumstances. This paper considers an alternative approach in which the robot utilizes forearm contact to create space for itself and to act as a safety buffer, during very close or congested navigation interactions. First, two categories of contact methods are defined based on different navigation scenarios. These contact methods are analyzed through different contact positions and force directions in a set of comparative experiments. The results of the comparative experiments are then incorporated into a contact-based framework that outputs the necessity, and the appropriate form of forearm contact. Finally, a set of evaluation experiments are performed to test the usability and effectiveness of the constructed framework. The results indicate that the proposed framework effectively outputs appropriate contact according to the situation, and aids the robot while navigating through space-constrained scenarios.