Co-manipulation with multiple probabilistic virtual guides

In co-manipulation, humans and robots solve manipulation tasks together. Virtual guides are important tools for co-manipulation, as they constrain the movement of the robot to avoid undesirable effects, such as collisions with the environment. Defining virtual guides is often a laborious task requiring expert knowledge. This restricts the usefulness of virtual guides in environments where new tasks may need to be solved, or where multiple tasks need to be solved sequentially, but in an unknown order. To this end, we propose a framework for multiple probabilistic virtual guides, and demonstrate a concrete implementation of such guides using kinesthetic teaching and Gaussian mixture models. Our approach enables non-expert users to design virtual guides through demonstration. Also, they may demonstrate novel guides, even if already known guides are active. Finally, users are able to intuitively select the appropriate guide from a set of guides through physical interaction with the robot. We evaluate our approach in a pick-and-place task, where users are to place objects at one of several positions in a cupboard.