Object handling control among two-wheel robots and a human operator: An empirical approach

This article presents object handling control between two-wheel robot manipulators, and a two-wheel robot and a human operator. The two-wheel robot has been built for serving humans in the indoor environment. It has two wheels to maintain balance and is able to make contact with a human operator via an object. A position-based impedance force control method is applied to maintain stable object-handling tasks. As the human operator pushes and pulls the object, the robot also reacts to maintain contact with the object by pulling and pushing against the object to regulate a specified force. Master and slave configuration of two-wheel robots is formed for handling an object, where the master robot or a human leads the slave robot equipped with a force sensor. Switching control from position to force or vice versa is presented. Experimental studies are performed to evaluate the feasibility of the object-handling task between two-wheel mobile robots, and the robot and a human operator.