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Preliminary Analysis of a Redundancy Resolution Method for Mobile Manipulators used in Physical Human Robot Interaction

PUBLICATION DATE: 5 May, 2023
PUBLICATION AUTHOR/S: Fernandez, L, Carmichael, M

Adding mobility to a manipulator significantly increases its reachable workspace, allowing it to perform a wider variety of tasks. However, this advantage introduces the problem of expanding the system’s solution space, resulting in an increase of different possible joint configurations for one specific end effector pose. Existing frameworks and algorithms have been developed that resolve this redundancy for a specific task. However, special care must be taken when mobile manipulators are used for Physical Human Robot Interaction (pHRI) applications.

This paper proposes a basic framework utilising the Projected Gradient (PG) method that can be implemented on mobile manipulators used in pHRI. It illustrates how this redundancy resolution method has characteristics that makes it favourable for pHRI applications. The framework effectively makes use of the manipulator’s high degree of precision when the task being executed is within its immediate workspace, while making use of the mobile platform’s mobility when the task to be performed is outside of the manipulator’s immediate workspace. This framework is validated firstly in simulation and then in a physical experiment. Both experiments successfully demonstrate the desired behaviour of a mobile manipulator system when used in the context of pHRI.

RELATED PROGRAM/S:
Human-Robot-Interaction
RELATED PROJECT/S:
Project 2.3: Multi-modal HRC
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