A Method for Embodied Co-Learning in Interdependent Human-Robot Teams

This paper addresses the research question: “How can a human-robot team achieve co-learning, and interdependence in physically embodied tasks?”<br/>A method has been developed that enables a human-robot team to co-learn the handover of an object from the robot to the human. Five design requirements were composed to address the challenges of...

A semi-autonomous adaptive impedance grip force controller for teleoperated object grasping

While defusing a bomb or performing a rescue mission with a teleoperated robot, grasping various objects is crucial. Despite being a routine activity, remote grasping is still challenging. It is difficult to apply an adequate grip force to avoid slippage and damage to an object. An additional challenge is controlling both motion and force at the...

Developing a high-performance patient-to-image registration system for robotic cochlear implant surgery: Through the human-robot interaction-focused design method leading to a multi-modal, multi-feedback admittance control, touch-based pair-point bone-anchored fiducial registration and its performance measured in accuracy, workload, usability and trust

This thesis presents the research to design a successful high-accuracy, sub-millimetric registration method for an autonomous robot equipped to drill bone for cochlear implant (CI) surgery. Its performance, and thus success, is measured in accuracy, workload, usability and trust. While state-of-the-art (STOTA) research lacks the inclusion of...

Robotic Skill Mutation when Propagating a Physical Collaborative Task from Robot-to-Robot

In this research, we examined the occurrence of skill mutation when propagating a collaborative sawing task from robot-to-robot. We conducted this research, to gain insight into this mutation to understand the generation of potentially beneficial or dangerous skills.<br/>Thirty propagation steps in simulation were conducted per experiment, each...

Safe Patient-Led Shoulder Rehabilitation with Biomechanical Model Integrated Collaborative Robot System

In this work, we propose a method for monitoring and management of rotator-cuff tendon strains in human-robot collaborative physical therapy for rotator cuff rehabilitation. The proposed approach integrates a complex offline biomechanical model with a collaborative, industrial robot arm and an impedance controller. The model is used for...

Multi-Metric Optimization for Human Walking

Walking is an essential part of almost all activities of daily living. Depending on the situation, different gait patterns can be observed, e.g., moving around the house, performing different sports, or even in case of injury. Even though the gait has been analyzed thoroughly for many decades, there are still some unexplored aspects that require...

Combining Manipulability and Fatigue for Multi-Metric Authority Arbitration of Physical Human-Robot Collaboration: A Proof of Concept

Human-robot interaction is a growing field that aims to research and develop communication channels between humans and robots to enhance comfort, safety, and productivity in healthcare, the household, and the industry. Researchers have considered ergonomy-related metrics to compose these channels for physical human-robot collaborative scenarios....

Learning Human Preferences for Motion Planning in Robotic Manipulation

Humans often demonstrate diverse behaviours due to their personal preferences, for instance related to their individual execution style or personal margin for safety. In this paper, we consider the problem of integrating such preferences into planning of trajectories for robotic manipulators. We first learn<br/>reward functions that represent...

Foot-operated tele-impedance control interface for robot manipulation tasks involving interaction with unstructured and unpredictable environments

Tele-impedance can increase interaction perfor- mance between a robotic tool and unstructured/unpredictable environment during teleoperation. However, the existing tele- impedance interfaces have several ongoing issues, such as long calibration times and various obstructions for the human oper- ator. In addition, they are all designed to be...

Teleoperated online Learning from Demonstration in a partly unknown environment: using a semi-autonomous care robot

The general approach to generate collision free motion in a constraint environment is to use path planners, which demand a known environment and potentially fail otherwise. Learning from Demonstration (LfD) can be used instead to teach the robot unknown parts of the environment, such as a goal deviation or an unforeseen obstacle. The general...

Commanding variable stiffness in three degrees of freedom through wiggling of a haptic master device: For a care robot application

Teleoperated semi-autonomous care robots aim to alleviate work pressure from care workers. Unlike many traditional stiff position-controlled robots, the care robot is operating in a shared environment with humans that is often unpredictable and unknown. Especially when dealing with tasks that involve contact with the environment, modulation of...

Visual Feedback for Haptic Assisted Teleoperation of an Industrial Robot: With Dross Removal as a Use Case

Haptic assistance (HA) has been shown to be useful in a wide variety of applications by providing the benefits of automation while keeping the human in the loop. In recent years, providing additional visual feedback has been found to provide benefits to HA interfaces by complementing their advantages and mitigating their weaknesses. However, the...

Balancing Long-term Plasticity Mechanisms at the Purkinje Cell in the Olivocerebellar System

The olivocerebellar system plays a crucial role in control of movements of the human body in terms of coordination, precision and timing. Long-term plasticity is directly linked to motor learning and control. In this research, we developed a phenomenological model of the olivocerebellar system with balancing of long-term potentiation (LTP) and...

A Vision-based Semi-autonomous Impedance Control Method in Teleoperation

Teleoperation of a robot is often necessary when the remote site is not safe for humans. Moreover, to interact with dynamic environments safely, a teleoperation method called teleimpedance, which allows the human operator to control the impedance of the robot, is used. The main drawback of this method is that the human workload may increase....

The coupling effect in bilateral tele-impedance: Beneficial or detrimental for unstructured environment interaction?

Tele-impedance augments classical teleoperation by enabling the human operator to actively command remote robot stiffness. Hereby, an essential strategy used by humans to successfully interact with the unstructured environment complements remote robot-environment interaction. However, literature lacks awareness of benefits and disbenefits of...