Human-Collaborative Schemes in the Motion Control of Single and Multiple Mobile Robots

Abstract

Abstract-In this chapter we show and compare several representative examples of human-collaborative schemes in the control of mobile robots, with a particular emphasis on the aerial robot case. We first provide a simplified yet descriptive model of the robot and its interactions. We then use this model to define a taxonomy that highlights the main aspects of these collaboration schemes, such as: the physical domain of the robots, the degree of autonomy, the force interaction with the operator (e.g., the unilateral versus the bilateral haptic shared control), the near-operation versus the teleoperation, the contact-free versus the physically interactive situation, the use of onboard sensors, and the presence of a time-horizon in the operator reference. We then specialize the proposed taxonomy to the multi-robot case in which we further distinguish the methods depending on their level of centralization, the presence of leader-follower schemes, of formation control schemes, the ability to preserve graph theoretical properties, and to perform cooperative physical interaction. The common denominator of all the examples presented in this chapter is the presence of a human operator in the control loop. The main goal of the chapter is to introduce the reader and provide a firstlevel analysis on the several ways to effectively include human operators in the control of both single and multiple aerial robots and, by extension, of more generic mobile robots.

Shared Control of an Aerial Cooperative Transportation System with a Cable-suspended Payload

“…Shared control has been widely researched in aerial robotics [12], because it represents a promising way to accelerate the adoption of UAVs in real world applications where the presence of a human supervisor is often mandatory. Jiang et al [21] demonstrate an application of shared control in the case of a single UAV, using a hysteresis switch as a blending function.…”

Towards Safe Human-Quadrotor Interaction: Mixed-Initiative Control via Real-Time NMPC

“…In this matter, researchers have been using haptic feedback to warn the operator about instantaneous collisions [9], [10]. Several human-collaborative schemes are compared in [11] where it is shown that haptic feedback is one of the main aspects. Among other considerations, it should be noted that the method used to generate assistive haptic cues strongly determines the usefulness of kinesthetic guidance to a large extent.…”

Gesture based Human-Swarm Interactions for Formation Control using interpreters

“…Related Work. According to recent surveys on HSI (Kolling et al (2016)) and human multi-agent systems (Franchi (2017)), humans either take a supervisory ( Savla and Frazzoli (2012) direct ( Setter et al (2015)), shared (Franchi et al (2012)) or environmental ( Wang and Schwager (2016)) control role in an HSI framework. Our architecture however, allows humans to provide high level supervisory inputs that are also direct and detailed at the same time, thus allowing a high degree of control with lesser human effort for large swarms.…”

“…Related Work. According to recent surveys on HSI (Kolling et al (2016)) and human multi-agent systems (Franchi (2017)), humans either take a supervisory ( Savla and Frazzoli (2012)),…”