Optimization of Joint Angles for Co-Manipulation of Rigid Objects with Baxter Research Robot

<div>Physical Human Robot Interaction is an</div><div>expanding field in robotics. Part of this expansion is</div><div>developing controllers that can be intuitive for human</div><div>partners to work with. One extension of this intuition is</div><div>developing human-like manipulability on robot platforms.</div><div>Our research involves using experimental observations of</div><div>human-human pairs to create an optimized joint configu-</div><div>ration for a Baxter Research Robot to work in a human-</div><div>robot pair. The joint angles are optimized to maximize</div><div>the manipulability over a trajectory in a global frame</div><div>direction. We also explore a optimizing in two global frame</div><div>directions. The methodology for deriving the cost function</div><div>and constraints are discussed,</div