In Human-Robot Collaboration, the robot operates in a highly dynamic environment. Thus, it is pivotal to guarantee the robust stability of the system during the interaction but also a high flexibility of the robot behavior in order to ensure safety and reactivity to the variable conditions of the collaborative scenario. In this paper we propose a control architecture capable of maximizing the flexibility of the robot while guaranteeing a stable behavior when physically interacting with the environment. This is achieved by combining an energy tank based variable admittance architecture with control barrier functions. The proposed architecture is experimentally validated on a collaborative robot.
This paper presents a system integration approach for a 6-DoF (Degree of Freedom) collaborative robot to operate a pipette for liquid dispensing. Its technical development is threefold. First, we designed an end-effector for holding and triggering manual pipettes. Second, we took advantage of a collaborative robot to recognize labware poses and planned robotic motion based on the recognized poses. Third, we developed vision-based classifiers to predict and correct positioning errors and thus precisely attached pipettes to disposable tips. Through experiments and analysis, we confirmed that the…
Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial (CSIC-UPC)（机器人与工业信息研究所（CSIC-UPC））
This paper proposes a Social Reward Sources (SRS) design for a Human-Robot Collaborative Navigation (HRCN) task: human-robot collaborative search. It is a flexible approach capable of handling the collaborative task, human-robot interaction and environment restrictions, all integrated on a common environment. We modelled task rewards based on unexplored area observability and isolation and evaluated the model through different levels of human-robot communication. The models are validated through quantitative evaluation against both agents' individual performance and qualitative surveying of pa…
For collaborative robots to become useful, end users who are not robotics experts must be able to instruct them to perform a variety of tasks. With this goal in mind, we developed a system for end-user creation of robust task plans with a broad range of capabilities. CoSTAR: the Collaborative System for Task Automation and Recognition is our winning entry in the 2016 KUKA Innovation Award competition at the Hannover Messe trade show, which this year focused on Flexible Manufacturing. CoSTAR is unique in how it creates natural abstractions that use perception to represent the world in a way use…
A new generation of robot systems which are modular, flexible and safe for human-robot interaction are needed. Existing cobots seem to meet only the later and require a modular approach to improve their reconfigurability and interoperability. We propose a new sub-class of cobots named M-cobots which tackle these problems. In particular, we discuss the relevance of synchronization for these systems, analyze it and demonstrate how with a properly configured M-cobot, we are able to obtain a) distributed sub-microsecond clock synchronization accuracy among modules, b) timestamping accuracy of ROS …
We study real-time collaborative robot (cobot) handling, where the cobot maneuvers a workpiece under human commands. This is useful when it is risky for humans to directly handle the workpiece. However, it is hard to make the cobot both easy to command and flexible in possible operations. In this work, we propose a Real-Time Collaborative Robot Handling (RTCoHand) framework that allows the control of cobot via user-customized dynamic gestures. This is hard due to variations among users, human motion uncertainties, and noisy human input. We model the task as a probabilistic generative process, …
The Industry 4.0 paradigm promises shorter development times, increased ergonomy, higher flexibility, and resource efficiency in manufacturing environments. Collaborative robots are an important tangible technology for implementing such a paradigm. A major bottleneck to effectively deploy collaborative robots to manufacturing industries is developing task planning algorithms that enable them to recognize and naturally adapt to varying and even unpredictable human actions while simultaneously ensuring an overall efficiency in terms of production cycle time. In this context, an architecture enco…
Christopher Newport University（克里斯托弗纽波特大学）；Bosch Center for Artificial Intelligence（博世人工智能中心）
In recent years, the model of computation known as Behavior Trees (BT), first developed in the video game industry, has become more popular in the robotics community for defining discrete behavior switching. BTs are threatening to supplant the venerable Hierarchical Finite State Machine (HFSM) model. In this paper we contrast BT and HFSM, pointing out some potential issues with the BT form, and advocate for a hybrid model of computation that uses both BT and HFSM in ways that leverage their individual strengths. The work introduces a new open-source package for ROS 2 that extends the Flexible …
Southern University of Denmark（丹麦南方大学）；Delft University of Technology（代尔夫特理工大学）
We propose a combined method for the collaborative transportation of a suspended payload by a team of rotorcraft. A recent distance-based formation-motion control algorithm based on assigning distance disagreements among robots generates the acceleration signals to be tracked by the vehicles. In particular, the proposed method does not need global positions nor tracking prescribed trajectories for the motion of the members of the team. The acceleration signals are followed accurately by an Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion controller designed for rotorcraft that measures and resists the …
Collaborative object transportation using multiple Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) with limited communication is a challenging problem. In this paper we address the problem of multiple MAVs mechanically coupled to a bulky object for transportation purposes without explicit communication between agents. The apparent physical properties of each agent are reshaped to achieve robustly stable transportation. Parametric uncertainties and unmodeled dynamics of each agent are quantified and techniques from robust control theory are employed to choose the physical parameters of each agent to guarantee sta…
University of Modena and Reggio Emilia（摩德纳-雷焦艾米利亚大学）
Human-robot collaborative tasks foresee interactions between humans and robots with various degrees of complexity. Specifically, for tasks which involve physical contact among the agents, challenges arise in the modelling and control of such interaction. In this paper we propose a control architecture capable of ensuring a flexible and robustly stable physical human-robot interaction, focusing on a collaborative transportation task. The architecture is deployed onto a mobile manipulator, modelled as a whole-body structure, which aids the operator during the transportation of an unwieldy load. …
Vibration Suppression in Collaborative Flexible Payload Manipulation Using Passive Force Control
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd（芬兰VTT技术研究中心）；RP Technical University of Kaiserslautern（凯泽斯劳滕RP工业大学）；UK Atomic Energy Authority（英国原子能管理局）；University of Oulu（奥卢大学）
The Industry 4.0 paradigm emphasizes the crucial benefits that collaborative robots, i.e., robots able to work alongside and together with humans, could bring to the whole production process. In this context, an enabling technology yet unreached is the design of flexible robots able to deal at all levels with humans' intrinsic variability, which is not only a necessary element for a comfortable working experience for the person but also a precious capability for efficiently dealing with unexpected events. In this paper, a sensing, representation, planning and control architecture for flexible …
University of Genoa（热那亚大学）；University of Huddersfield（哈德斯菲尔德大学）
Articulated and flexible objects constitute a challenge for robot manipulation tasks but are present in different real-world settings, including home and industrial environments. Current approaches to the manipulation of articulated and flexible objects employ ad hoc strategies to sequence and perform actions on them depending on a number of physical or geometrical characteristics related to those objects, as well as on an a priori classification of target object configurations. In this paper, we propose an action planning and execution framework, which (i) considers abstract representations o…
University of Genoa（热那亚大学）；Teseo srl（Teseo公司）；University of Huddersfield（哈德斯菲尔德大学）
This paper addresses two intertwined needs for collaborative robots operating in shop-floor environments. The first is the ability to perform complex manipulation operations, such as those on articulated or even flexible objects, in a way robust to a high degree of variability in the actions possibly carried out by human operators during collaborative tasks. The second is encoding in such operations a basic knowledge about physical laws (e.g., gravity), and their effects on the models used by the robot to plan its actions, to generate more robust plans. We adopt the manipulation in three-dimen…
This paper presents a robust control scheme for flexible link robotic manipulators, which is based on considering the flexible mechanical structure as a system with slow (rigid) and fast (flexible) modes that can be controlled separately. The rigid dynamics is controlled by means of a robust sliding-mode approach with wellestablished stability properties while an LQR optimal design is adopted for the flexible dynamics. Experimental results show that this composite approach achieves good closed loop tracking properties both for the rigid and the flexible dynamics.
Robust Collaborative Perception without External Localization and Clock Devices
Cooperative Medianet Innovation Center（合作中位数创新中心）；Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学）；Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院深圳先进技术研究院）；New York University（纽约大学）；Shanghai AI Laboratory（上海人工智能实验室）
Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia（意大利理工学院）；University of Naples Federico II（那不勒斯费德里科二世大学）
Enabling robots to work in close proximity to humans necessitates a control framework that does not only incorporate multi-sensory information for autonomous and coordinated interactions but also has perceptive task planning to ensure an adaptable and flexible collaborative behaviour. In this research, an intuitive stack-of-tasks (iSoT) formulation is proposed, that defines the robot's actions by considering the human-arm postures and the task progression. The framework is augmented with visuo-tactile information to effectively perceive the collaborative environment and intuitively switch betw…
Communication and Control in Collaborative UAVs: Recent Advances and Future Trends
Tongji University（同济大学）；Frontiers Science Center for Intelligent Autonomous Systems（智能自主系统前沿科学中心）；United Arab Emirates University (UAEU)（阿联酋大学）；Western Sydney University（西悉尼大学）；Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University（安柏瑞德航空大学）；Hankuk University of Foreign Studies（韩国外国语大学）
Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学）；Nanjing University（南京大学）；Meta Reality Labs（Meta现实实验室）；University of Warwick（华威大学）；New York University（纽约大学）；Shanghai AI Laboratory（上海人工智能实验室）
Collaborative 3D object detection exploits information exchange among multiple agents to enhance accuracy of object detection in presence of sensor impairments such as occlusion. However, in practice, pose estimation errors due to imperfect localization would cause spatial message misalignment and significantly reduce the performance of collaboration. To alleviate adverse impacts of pose errors, we propose CoAlign, a novel hybrid collaboration framework that is robust to unknown pose errors. The proposed solution relies on a novel agent-object pose graph modeling to enhance pose consistency am…
