Temporal models of motions and forces for Human-Robot Interactive manipulation

L'intérêt pour la robotique a débuté dans les années 70 et depuis les robots n'ont cessé de remplacer les humains dans l'industrie. L'automatisation à outrance n'apporte cependant pas que des avantages, car elle nécessite des environnements parfaitement contrôlés et la reprogrammation d'une tâche est longue et fastidieuse. Le besoin accru d'adaptabilité et de ré-utilisabilité des systèmes d'assemblage force la robotique à se révolutionner en amenant notamment l'homme et le robot à interagir. Ce nouveau type de collaboration permet de combiner les forces respectives des humains et des robots. Cependant l'homme ne pourra être inclus en tant qu'agent actif dans ces nouveaux espaces de travail collaboratifs que si l'on dispose de robots sûrs, intuitifs et facilement reprogrammables. C'est à la lumière de ce constat qu'on peut deviner le rôle crucial de la génération de mouvement pour les robots de demain. Pour que les humains et les robots puissent collaborer, ces derniers doivent générer des mouvements sûrs afin de garantir la sécurité de l'homme tant physique que psychologique. Les trajectoires sont un excellent modèle pour la génération de mouvements adaptés aux robots collaboratifs, car elles offrent une description simple et précise de l'évolution du mouvement. Les trajectoires dîtes souples sont bien connues pour générer des mouvements sûrs et confortables pour l'homme. Dans cette thèse nous proposons un algorithme de génération de trajectoires temps-réel basé sur des séquences de segments de fonctions polynomiales de degré trois pour construire des trajectoires souples. Ces trajectoires sont construites à partir de conditions initiales et finales arbitraires, une condition nécessaire pour que les robots soient capables de réagir instantanément à des événements imprévus. L'approche basée sur un modèle à jerk-contraint offre des solutions orientées performance: les trajectoires sont optimales en temps sous contraintes de sécurité. Ces contraintes de sécurité sont des contraintes cinématiques qui dépendent de la tâche et du contexte et doivent être spécifiées. Pour guider le choix de ces contraintes, nous avons étudié le rôle de la cinématique dans la définition des propriétés ergonomiques du mouvement. L'algorithme a également été étendu pour accepter des configurations initiales non admissibles permettant la génération de trajectoires sous contraintes cinématiques non constantes. Cette extension est essentielle dans le contexte des interactions physiques homme-robot, car le robot doit être capable d'adapter son comportement en temps-réel pour préserver la sécurité physique et psychologique des humains. Cependant considérer le problème de la génération de trajectoires ne suffit pas si on ne considère pas le contrôle. Le passage d'une trajectoire à une autre est un problème difficile pour la plupart des systèmes robotiques dans des contextes applicatifs réels. Pour cela, nous proposons une stratégie de contrôle réactif de ces trajectoires ainsi qu'une architecture construite autour de l'utilisation des trajectoires.It was in the 70s when the interest for robotics really emerged. It was barely half a century ago, and since then robots have been replacing humans in the industry. This robot-oriented solution doesn't come without drawbacks as full automation requires time-consuming programming as well as rigid environments. With the increased need for adaptability and reusability of assembly systems, robotics is undergoing major changes and see the emergence of a new type of collaboration between humans and robots. Human-Robot collaboration get the best of both world by combining the respective strengths of humans and robots. But, to include the human as an active agent in these new collaborative workspaces, safe and flexible robots are required. It is in this context that we can apprehend the crucial role of motion generation in tomorrow's robotics. For the emergence of human-robot cooperation, robots have to generate motions ensuring the safety of humans, both physical and physchological. For this reason motion generation has been a restricting factor to the growth of robotics in the past. Trajectories are excellent candidates in the making of desirable motions designed for collaborative robots, because they allow to simply and precisely describe the motions. Smooth trajectories are well known to provide safe motions with good ergonomic properties. In this thesis we propose an Online Trajectory Generation algorithm based on sequences of segment of third degree polynomial functions to build smooth trajectories. These trajectories are built from arbitrary initial and final conditions, a requirement for robots to be able to react instantaneously to unforeseen events. Our approach built on a constrained-jerk model offers performance-oriented solutions : the trajectories are time-optimal under safety constraints. These safety constraints are kinematic constraints that are task and context dependent and must be specified. To guide the choice of these constraints we investigated the role of kinematics in the definition of ergonomics properties of motions. We also extended our algorithm to cope with non-admissible initial configurations, opening the way to trajectory generation under non-constant motion constraints. This feature is essential in the context of physical Human-Robot Interactions, as the robot must adapt its behavior in real time to preserve both the physical and psychological safety of humans. However, only considering the trajectory generation problem is not enough and the control of these trajectories must be adressed. Switching from a trajectory to another is a difficult problem for most robotic systems in real applicative contexts. For this purpose we propose a strategy for the Reactive Control of these Trajectories as well as an architecture built around the use of trajectories

Advanced Strategies for Robot Manipulators

Amongst the robotic systems, robot manipulators have proven themselves to be of increasing importance and are widely adopted to substitute for human in repetitive and/or hazardous tasks. Modern manipulators are designed complicatedly and need to do more precise, crucial and critical tasks. So, the simple traditional control methods cannot be efficient, and advanced control strategies with considering special constraints are needed to establish. In spite of the fact that groundbreaking researches have been carried out in this realm until now, there are still many novel aspects which have to be explored

Robots learn to behave: improving human-robot collaboration in flexible manufacturing applications

L'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen

Trust-Based Control of Robotic Manipulators in Collaborative Assembly in Manufacturing

Human-robot interaction (HRI) is vastly addressed in the field of automation and manufacturing. Most of the HRI literature in manufacturing explored physical human-robot interaction (pHRI) and invested in finding means for ensuring safety and optimized effort sharing amongst a team of humans and robots. The recent emergence of safe, lightweight, and human-friendly robots has opened a new realm for human-robot collaboration (HRC) in collaborative manufacturing. For such robots with the new HRI functionalities to interact closely and effectively with a human coworker, new human-centered controllers that integrate both physical and social interaction are demanded. Social human-robot interaction (sHRI) has been demonstrated in robots with affective abilities in education, social services, health care, and entertainment. Nonetheless, sHRI should not be limited only to those areas. In particular, we focus on human trust in robot as a basis of social interaction. Human trust in robot and robot anthropomorphic features have high impacts on sHRI. Trust is one of the key factors in sHRI and a prerequisite for effective HRC. Trust characterizes the reliance and tendency of human in using robots. Factors within a robotic system (e.g. performance, reliability, or attribute), the task, and the surrounding environment can all impact the trust dynamically. Over-reliance or under-reliance might occur due to improper trust, which results in poor team collaboration, and hence higher task load and lower overall task performance. The goal of this dissertation is to develop intelligent control algorithms for the manipulator robots that integrate both physical and social HRI factors in the collaborative manufacturing. First, the evolution of human trust in a collaborative robot model is identified and verified through a series of human-in-the-loop experiments. This model serves as a computational trust model estimating an objective criterion for the evolution of human trust in robot rather than estimating an individual\u27s actual level of trust. Second, an HRI-based framework is developed for controlling the speed of a robot performing pick and place tasks. The impact of the consideration of the different level of interaction in the robot controller on the overall efficiency and HRI criteria such as human perceived workload and trust and robot usability is studied using a series of human-in-the-loop experiments. Third, an HRI-based framework is developed for planning and controlling the robot motion in performing hand-over tasks to the human. Again, series of human-in-the-loop experimental studies are conducted to evaluate the impact of implementation of the frameworks on overall efficiency and HRI criteria such as human workload and trust and robot usability. Finally, another framework is proposed for the cooperative manipulation of a common object by a team of a human and a robot. This framework proposes a trust-based role allocation strategy for adjusting the proactive behavior of the robot performing a cooperative manipulation task in HRC scenarios. For the mentioned frameworks, the results of the experiments show that integrating HRI in the robot controller leads to a lower human workload while it maintains a threshold level of human trust in robot and does not degrade robot usability and efficiency

Robot Manipulators

Robot manipulators are developing more in the direction of industrial robots than of human workers. Recently, the applications of robot manipulators are spreading their focus, for example Da Vinci as a medical robot, ASIMO as a humanoid robot and so on. There are many research topics within the field of robot manipulators, e.g. motion planning, cooperation with a human, and fusion with external sensors like vision, haptic and force, etc. Moreover, these include both technical problems in the industry and theoretical problems in the academic fields. This book is a collection of papers presenting the latest research issues from around the world

Recent Advances in Robust Control

Robust control has been a topic of active research in the last three decades culminating in H_2/H_\infty and \mu design methods followed by research on parametric robustness, initially motivated by Kharitonov's theorem, the extension to non-linear time delay systems, and other more recent methods. The two volumes of Recent Advances in Robust Control give a selective overview of recent theoretical developments and present selected application examples. The volumes comprise 39 contributions covering various theoretical aspects as well as different application areas. The first volume covers selected problems in the theory of robust control and its application to robotic and electromechanical systems. The second volume is dedicated to special topics in robust control and problem specific solutions. Recent Advances in Robust Control will be a valuable reference for those interested in the recent theoretical advances and for researchers working in the broad field of robotics and mechatronics

Safe navigation and human-robot interaction in assistant robotic applications

L'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen

Proceedings of the NASA Conference on Space Telerobotics, volume 2

These proceedings contain papers presented at the NASA Conference on Space Telerobotics held in Pasadena, January 31 to February 2, 1989. The theme of the Conference was man-machine collaboration in space. The Conference provided a forum for researchers and engineers to exchange ideas on the research and development required for application of telerobotics technology to the space systems planned for the 1990s and beyond. The Conference: (1) provided a view of current NASA telerobotic research and development; (2) stimulated technical exchange on man-machine systems, manipulator control, machine sensing, machine intelligence, concurrent computation, and system architectures; and (3) identified important unsolved problems of current interest which can be dealt with by future research