Concept for Human Robot Co-operation Integrating Artificial Haptic Perception

Human robot co-operation becomes more and more important when using robots in daily life and is a key note in the design of humanoid robots. The authors are members of the newly founded centre of excellence “Humanoid robots – cooperating and learning systems” at the University of Karlsruhe. Our group of researchers is responsible for the human robot co-operation, a haptic sensor system and the control of a robot hand. All three topics closely co-operate as the human robot co-operation (using a robot arm and a robot hand attached to it) is mainly based on the haptic sensor system within the first phase of the project. In this paper we present our first classifications for human robot co-operation and contacts between a robot and a human or an object, which both form the basis for our practical work. The control concept of our robotic system is depicted as well.