Reactive motion control for human-robot tactile interaction

In the field of service robotics, robots serve and assist human beings. It is natural for humans to directly interact with the robot via tactile interfaces. This paper introduces several kinds of tactile interactions between a user and the robot as well as interactions of the robot with the environment. All interactions are implemented in a single paradigm: Forces measured from tactile sensors result in motion vectors at the contact points. The motion vectors from different sensors are superimposed and then determine the robot's joint velocities. We present results from our experimental setup consisting of an 8 degrees of freedom manipulator arm mounted on a mobile platform. In the illustrated example, a human interacts with the robot using only the tactile interface.