A new control architecture for physical human-robot interaction based on haptic communication

In the near future, humans and robots are expected to perform collaborative tasks involving physical interaction in various different environments such as homes, hospitals, and factories. One important research topic in physical Human-Robot Interaction (pHRI) is to develop tacit and natural haptic communication between the partners. Although there are already several studies in the area of Human-Robot Interaction, the number of studies investigating the physical interaction between the partners and in particular the haptic communication are limited and the interaction in such systems is still artificial when compared to natural human-human collaboration. Although the tasks involving physical interaction such as the table transportation can be planned and executed naturally and intuitively by two humans, there are unfortunately no robots in the market that can collaborate and perform the same tasks with us. In this study, we propose a new controller for the robotic partner that is designed to a) detect the intentions of the human partner through haptic channel using a fuzzy controller b) adjust its contribution to the task via a variable impedance controller and c) resolve the conflicts during the task execution by controlling the internal forces. The results of the simulations performed in Simulink/Matlab show that the proposed controller is superior to the stand-alone standard/variable impedance controllers.