Touch: The direct type of human interaction with a redundant service robot

The mobile service robots will share their workspaces e.g. offices, hospitals or households with humans. Thus a direct contact between man and machine is inevitable. Robots equipped with appropriate sensors can sense the touch. In this paper we present how an untrained user can intuitively interact with the new DLR light-weight robot just by touching the arm. The robot with 7 dof's will react by an evasiveness motion of the touched links while retaining the orientation of the TCP. This feature can also be used for programming the robot. Programming by "touch" is very intuitive as you take the robot at hand and demonstrate the movements.

[1]  Gerd Hirzinger,et al.  Redundant motions of non-redundant robots a new approach to singularity treatment , 1995, Proceedings of 1995 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[2]  G. Hirzinger,et al.  An Intuitive Interface for Nullspace Teaching of Redundant Robots , 2000 .

[3]  Fan-Tien Cheng,et al.  Resolving manipulator redundancy under inequality constraints , 1994, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[4]  Alessandro De Luca,et al.  A general algorithm for dynamic feedback linearization of robots with elastic joints , 1998, Proceedings. 1998 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.98CH36146).

[5]  Günter Schreiber,et al.  Solving the singularity problem of non-redundant manipulators by constraint optimization , 1999, Proceedings 1999 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. Human and Environment Friendly Robots with High Intelligence and Emotional Quotients (Cat. No.99CH36289).

[6]  Lin Tian,et al.  Robust adaptive control of flexible joint robots with joint torque feedback , 1995, Proceedings of 1995 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[7]  Petar V. Kokotovic,et al.  An integral manifold approach to the feedback control of flexible joint robots , 1987, IEEE J. Robotics Autom..

[8]  Mark C. Readman.  Flexible Joint Robots , 1994 .

[9]  Alin Albu-Schäffer,et al.  On a new generation of torque controlled light-weight robots , 2001, Proceedings 2001 ICRA. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.01CH37164).

[10]  Alin Albu-Schäffer,et al.  Parameter identification and passivity based joint control for a 7 DOF torque controlled light weight robot , 2001, Proceedings 2001 ICRA. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.01CH37164).

[11]  Rogelio Lozano,et al.  Global tracking controllers for flexible-joint manipulators: a comparative study , 1995, Autom..

[12]  Alin Albu-Schäffer,et al.  State feedback controller for flexible joint robots: a globally stable approach implemented on DLR's light-weight robots , 2000, Proceedings. 2000 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2000) (Cat. No.00CH37113).

[13]  Gerd Hirzinger,et al.  Key issues in the dynamic control of lightweight robots for space and terrestrial applications , 1998, Proceedings. 1998 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.98CH36146).

[14]  M. Spong.  Modeling and Control of Elastic Joint Robots , 1987 .