Adaptive robot control for human-dominant interactions using a general task function

When humans and a robot manipulator are sharing the same workspace, the robot is required to interact with the humans in addition to performing the standard robot tasks. Due to the different natures of the robot tasks and interaction tasks, different controllers are required when the task is switched from one to another. However, few results have been obtained in integrating the robot task and the interaction task using one general controller. In this paper, a general task function is employed so that different task requirements can be specified by changing certain task parameters instead of the controller. A simple active role allocation is developed such that when the human is outside the robots workspace, the robot performs the desired robot task and when the human enters the workspace, the robot interacts with human in a way or behaviour as specified by the human. The stability of overall system which integrates both the robot task and interaction task is shown by using Lyapunov like analysis. Experimental results are presented to illustrate the performance of proposed controller.