Programming by touch: the different way of human-robot interaction

Mobile service robots will share their workspaces, e.g., offices, hospitals, or households, with humans. Thus, a direct contact between man and machine is inevitable. Robots equipped with appropriate sensors can sense the touch. In this paper, we present how an unskilled user can intuitively teach the lightweight robot at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), We/spl szlig/ling, Germany, just by touching the arm. Programming by "touch" is very intuitive as you take the robot by the hand and demonstrate the movements. This feature can also be used to interact with the service robot while executing a task. Therefore, if our seven-degrees-of-freedom robot arm senses a touch, it will react by an evasive motion of the touched links while keeping the orientation of the tool center point.

[1]  Rogelio Lozano,et al.  Global tracking controllers for flexible-joint manipulators: a comparative study , 1995, Autom..

[2]  Alin Albu-Schäffer,et al.  Cartesian impedance control techniques for torque controlled light-weight robots , 2002, Proceedings 2002 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.02CH37292).

[3]  Neville Hogan,et al.  Impedance Control: An Approach to Manipulation: Part III—Applications , 1985 .

[4]  Mark C. Readman Flexible Joint Robots , 1994 .

[5]  Neville Hogan,et al.  Impedance Control: An Approach to Manipulation: Part I—Theory , 1985 .

[6]  Imin Kao,et al.  Simulation of conservative congruence transformation. Conservative properties in the joint and Cartesian spaces , 2000, Proceedings 2000 ICRA. Millennium Conference. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. Symposia Proceedings (Cat. No.00CH37065).

[7]  Günter Schreiber,et al.  A New Generation of Compliance Controlled Manipulators with Human Arm Like Properties , 2001, ISRR.

[8]  Gerd Hirzinger,et al.  Redundant motions of non-redundant robots a new approach to singularity treatment , 1995, Proceedings of 1995 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[9]  G. Hirzinger,et al.  An Intuitive Interface for Nullspace Teaching of Redundant Robots , 2000 .

[10]  Lin Tian,et al.  Robust adaptive control of flexible joint robots with joint torque feedback , 1995, Proceedings of 1995 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[11]  N. Hogan Mechanical Impedance of Single- and Multi-Articular Systems , 1990 .

[12]  Petar V. Kokotovic,et al.  An integral manifold approach to the feedback control of flexible joint robots , 1987, IEEE J. Robotics Autom..

[13]  Alin Albu-Schäffer,et al.  On a new generation of torque controlled light-weight robots , 2001, Proceedings 2001 ICRA. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.01CH37164).

[14]  Günter Schreiber,et al.  Interactive redundant robotics: control of the inverted pendulum with nullspace motion , 2001, Proceedings 2001 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. Expanding the Societal Role of Robotics in the the Next Millennium (Cat. No.01CH37180).

[15]  Günter Schreiber,et al.  Solving the singularity problem of non-redundant manipulators by constraint optimization , 1999, Proceedings 1999 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. Human and Environment Friendly Robots with High Intelligence and Emotional Quotients (Cat. No.99CH36289).

[16]  Alessandro De Luca,et al.  A general algorithm for dynamic feedback linearization of robots with elastic joints , 1998, Proceedings. 1998 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.98CH36146).

[17]  Alin Albu-Schäffer,et al.  Parameter identification and passivity based joint control for a 7 DOF torque controlled light weight robot , 2001, Proceedings 2001 ICRA. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.01CH37164).

[18]  J. Salisbury,et al.  Active stiffness control of a manipulator in cartesian coordinates , 1980, 1980 19th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control including the Symposium on Adaptive Processes.

[19]  Alin Albu-Schäffer,et al.  State feedback controller for flexible joint robots: a globally stable approach implemented on DLR's light-weight robots , 2000, Proceedings. 2000 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2000) (Cat. No.00CH37113).

[20]  Fan-Tien Cheng,et al.  Resolving manipulator redundancy under inequality constraints , 1994, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[21]  Neville Hogan,et al.  Impedance Control: An Approach to Manipulation: Part II—Implementation , 1985 .

[22]  Gerd Hirzinger,et al.  Flexible robot-assembly using a multi-sensory approach , 2000, Proceedings 2000 ICRA. Millennium Conference. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. Symposia Proceedings (Cat. No.00CH37065).

[23]  M. Spong Modeling and Control of Elastic Joint Robots , 1987 .