Reactive Motion Planning for Human-Robot Cooperative Tasks Under Uncertainties

Assistive robotics aims to design physically collaborative robots which are able to help human partners with cumbersome tasks; for instance, lifting a heavy plank/guard and inserting it into a frame at the ceiling. To reduce human loadshare, it is expected from the robot to perform such tasks in coordination with the human partner. Uncertainty of human behavior and complex dynamics of real-world environments pose challenging problems for robotic systems. It is crucial to employ control frameworks that allow for both motion tracking and interaction/force control. Furthermore, the framework should allow for reactive and adaptive motion planning toward human behavior. To deliver these requirements, we propose a Dynamical System-based control architecture with adaptation capabilities. Our preliminary experimentation using ARMAR6 shows promising performances to achieve such a complex task in collaboration with human users.