Assistive Social Robots for People with Special needs

An increasing number of elderly people leads todemand for social robots to support health care and independentlife. An overview of various potential applications of social robotsis provided in this paper. In addition, the latest research progressin our institute is presented, i.e., multi-party interaction, gesturerecognition, affective computing, and attention capture. All theresearch and applications demonstrate that social robots are goodassistive robots for people with special needs

Toward Effective Physical Human-Robot Interaction

With the fast advancement of technology, in recent years, robotics technology has significantly matured and produced robots that are able to operate in unstructured environments such as domestic environments, offices, hospitals and other human-inhabited locations. In this context, the interaction and cooperation between humans and robots has become an important and challenging aspect of robot development. Among the various kinds of possible interactions, in this Ph.D. thesis I am particularly interested in physical human-robot interaction (pHRI). In order to study how a robot can successfully engage in physical interaction with people and which factors are crucial during this kind of interaction, I investigated how humans and robots can hand over objects to each other. To study this specific interactive task I developed two robotic prototypes and conducted human-robot user studies. Although various aspects of human-robot handovers have been deeply investigated in the state of the art, during my studies I focused on three issues that have been rarely investigated so far: Human presence and motion analysis during the interaction in order to infer non-verbal communication cues and to synchronize the robot actions with the human motion; Development and evaluation of human-aware pro-active robot behaviors that enable robots to behave actively in the proximity of the human body in order to negotiate the handover location and to perform the transfer of the object; Consideration of objects grasp affordances during the handover in order to make the interaction more comfortable for the human

Payload analysis and control of manipulators for human interactive environments

Esta tesis doctoral presenta los resultados de simulaciones numéricas y algunos análisis experimentales de tres aspectos principales: el modelamiento dinámico de manipuladores de múltiples grados de libertad (GdL) (n 2 GdL), el cálculo de la capacidad dinámica de carga asociada al manejo de dicha carga, y el análisis y diseño de controladores no lineales incluyendo el Control Adaptativo por Desfalsificación (CAD). Se desarrollaron análisis de dos (2) casos de estudio: el SCORBOT ER V PLUS fabricado por Intelitech Corp. de 5 grados de libertad y el manipulador redundante de 7 grados de libertad conocido como el Whole Arm Manipulator (WAM) fabricado por Barrett Technology Inc. y que cuenta con características de seguridad intrínseca, manipulación inversa y docilidad, y es aplicable en la interacción humano-robot (IHR). Inicialmente, se calculó y validó el modelado dinámico de los casos de estudio. Los modelos dinámicos inverso y directo del SCORBOT ER V PLUS fueron validados numéricamente. Luego, una validación experimental para el WAM presenta una comparación entre los datos numéricos y experimentales, identificando la necesidad de un mejor modelo de la fricción seca. Después, se propuso y evaluó una metodología para el cálculo de la capacidad dinámica de carga en el espacio de trabajo completo de manipuladores para diferentes tipos de controladores. Luego, para el análisis del Control Adaptativo por Desfalsificación con factor de olvido para manipuladores de múltiples grados de libertad, se realizó una comparación con un controlador adaptativo tradicional basado en el modelo y se aplicó al modelo del manipulador SCORBOR ER V PLUS. Finalmente, la técnica de Control por Desfalsificación fue exitosamente aplicada al modelo del WAM. En conclusión, este trabajo puede contribuir al uso de técnicas de control no lineal avanzado y manejo de carga para manipuladores redundantes con manipulación inversa, aplicables en ambientes de interacción con humanosAbstract : This doctoral thesis presents the results of numerical simulations and some experimental analysis of three main topics: the dynamical modeling of multiple degree of freedom (MDoF) manipulators (n 2 DoF), dynamic load carrying capacity computation (DLCC) for the payload handling issue and nonlinear control analysis and design including Unfalsified Adaptive Control (UAC). We performed analysis of two (2) cases of study: the 5 DoF SCORBOT ER V PLUS manufactured by Intelitech Corp. and the 7 DoF redundant Whole Arm Manipulator (WAM) manufactured by Barrett Technology Inc. with intrinsic safety, backdrivable and compliant characteristics and suitable for human-robot interaction (HRI). Initially, we computed and validated the dynamical model of the cases of study. The inverse and direct dynamical models of the SCORBOT ER V PLUS were numerically validated. Then, an experimental validation of inverse dynamical model of the WAM presents a comparison between numerical and experimental data, identifying the need for better friction models. After that, we proposed and evaluated a methodology for DLCC computation in the entire workspace of manipulators for different types of controllers. Then, for the analysis of the data-driven UAC with fading memory for multiple DoF manipulators, we performed a comparison with a traditional modelbased Adaptive Controller and applied to the SCORBOT ER V PLUS manipulator. Finally, the Unfalsified Control technique was successfully applied to the WAM model for a similar simulation setup. In conclusion, this work may contribute to the use of advanced nonlinear control and payload handling techniques for redundant backdrivable multiple DoF manipulators, suitable for human interactive environmentsDoctorad