A Unifying Framework for Human-Agent Collaborative Systems-Part I: Element and Relation Analysis

The human-agent collaboration (HAC) is a prospective research topic whose great applications and future scenarios have attracted vast attention. In a broad sense, the HAC system (HACS) can be broken down into six elements: "Man," "Agents," "Goal," "Network," "Environment," and "Tasks." By merging these elements and building a relation graph, this article proposes a systematic analysis framework for HACS, and attempts to make a comprehensive analysis of these elements and their relationships. We coin the abbreviation "MAGNET" to name the framework by stringing together the initials of the above six terms. The framework provides novel insights into analyzing various HAC patterns and integrates different types of HACSs in a unifying way. The presentation of the HACS framework is divided into two parts. This article, part I, presents the systematic analysis framework. Part II proposes a normalized two-stage top-level design procedure for designing an HACS from the perspective of MAGNET.

A Dynamic Modeling Method for the Bi-Directional Pneumatic Actuator Using Dynamic Equilibrium Equation

Dynamic modeling of soft pneumatic actuators are a challenging research field. In this paper, a dynamic modeling method used for a bi-directionaly soft pneumatic actuator with symmetrical chambers is proposed. In this dynamic model, the effect of uninflated rubber block on bending deformation is considered. The errors resulting from the proposed dynamic equilibrium equation are analyzed, and a compensation method for the dynamic equilibrium equation is proposed. The equation can be solved quickly after simplification. The results show that the proposed dynamic model can describe the motion process of the bi-directional pneumatic actuator effectively.

Energy budgets for coordinate invariant robot control in physical human–robot interaction

In this work we consider the current certification process of applications with physical human–robot interaction (pHRI). Two major hazards are collisions and clamping scenarios. The implementation of safety measures in pHRI applications typically depends strongly on coordinates, e.g., to monitor the robot velocity or to predict external forces. We show that the current certification process does not, in general, guarantee a safe robot behavior. In particular, in unstructured environments it is not possible to predict all risks in advance. We therefore propose to control the energy of the robot, which is a coordinate invariant entity. For an impedance controlled robot, the total energy consists of potential energy and kinetic energy. The energy flow from task description to physical interaction follows a strict causality. We assign a safe energy budget for the robot. With this energy budget, the presented controller auto-tunes its parameters to limit the exchanged kinetic energy during a collision and the potential energy during clamping scenarios. In contact, the robot behaves compliantly and therefore eliminates clamping danger. After contact, the robot automatically continues to follow the desired trajectory. With this approach the number of safety-related parameters to be determined can be reduced to one energy value, which has the potential to significantly speed up the commissioning of pHRI applications. The proposed technique is validated by experiments.

A Multi-Priority Control of Asymmetric Coordination for Redundant Dual-Arm Robot

The paper develops a multi-priority control method of asymmetric coordination for a redundant dual-arm robot. A novel dual-arm coordination impedance is introduced to the multi-priority control, and then the performance of the object tracking and the redundant joints is improved by the regulation of the relative Cartesian errors between two arms. The control of asymmetric coordination is divided into the main task and the secondary task. The control of the main task can regulate the two end-effectors’ errors and the relative errors by building the model of spatial parallel spring and damping (SPSDM), which establishes the dual-arm coordination impedance relation in Cartesian space. The control of the secondary task optimizes the performance of the redundant joint impedance and joint limit avoidance in null space. Finally, a typical asymmetric coordination experiment of peg-in-hole is carried out to verify the validity and feasibility of the proposed method. The results indicate that the proposed dual-arm coordination impedance can regulate the relative tracking errors between two objects directly, and in the context of the external impact force applied to the two end-effectors, the peg-in-hole dual-arm task can be achieved successfully.