Performing bimanual tasks with dual robotic setups can drastically increase the impact on industrial and daily life applications. However, performing a bimanual task brings many challenges, such as synchronization and coordination of the single-arm policies. This article proposes the safe, interactive movement primitives learning (SIMPLe) algorithm, to teach and correct single or dual arm impedance policies directly from human kinesthetic demonstrations. Moreover, it proposes a novel graph encoding of the policy based on Gaussian process regression where the single-arm motion is guaranteed to converge close to the trajectory and then toward the demonstrated goal. Regulation of the robot stiffness according to the epistemic uncertainty of the policy allows for easily reshaping the motion with human feedback and/or adapting to external perturbations. We tested the SIMPLe algorithm on a real dual-arm setup where the teacher gave separate single-arm demonstrations and then successfully synchronized them only using kinesthetic feedback or where the original bimanual demonstration was locally reshaped to pick a box at a different height.

People suffering from conditions affecting their activities of daily living and those who do straining repetitive tasks could be assisted using supportive devices. These devices have generally been stiff in design, with more recent advances exploring soft suits, removing the need for heavier structural components. These supportive devices are often fitted with rigid actuators that lack inherent compliance and rely on feedback to regulate the assistive force. Compl iant actuators able to control stiffness and pretension have only been applied in rigid assistive devices with these devices being designed for controllable stiffness in rotation and not linear motion. This work briefly presents the results of a user study on the effects of a compliant actuator in a soft supportive device for arm flexion, the development and testing of a variable linear stiffness mechanism for a linear motion capable of controlling the stiffness and equilibrium position, and the integration of said actuator in an exosuit.