Human-robot interaction

• Main Author: Dai, Siyang
• Other Authors: Cheah Chien Chern
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering::Control and instrumentation::Robotics
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/54203
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Human-robot interaction is a scientific study on interactions between humans and robots. Robots are generally seen in factories but more and more commonly they are found in areas like search and rescue, scientific exploration, mine and bomb detection, military battle, entertainment, law enforcement and hospital care. As the application of robotics is entering new domains in our life, the interaction with human will be closer and more frequent. One active research topic on human and robot interaction is the rehabilitative robotics or therapeutic robotics. With the research on the area, human or clinical practice is being replaced by robots to help post stroke or post brain injured patients regain motion control. In this report, an adaptive trajectory tracking robot controller was implemented to interact with user in various ways. The assist-as-needed policy was considered to cater to patients in different recovery stages. In the controller design, a position-dependent stiffness parameter was employed to give patients certain level of freedom and a weight vector was implemented to ensure smooth transition across different regions in the Cartesian plane defined for rehabilitation. A more advanced feature of the controller is that it can “feel” the force applied by the user and react in certain ways. This kind of interaction can handle the undesired user motion properly and guide the user to move in various patterns.