A Stable and Transparent Framework for Adaptive Shared Control of Robots (Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics, 158)

✍ Scribed by Ribin Balachandran

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 2024
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 198
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Robotic research and developments in computing technologies including artificial intelligence have led to significant improvements in autonomous capabilities of robots. Yet, human supervision is advisable and, in many cases, necessary when robots interact with real-world, outside-lab environments. This is due to the fact that complete autonomy in robots has not yet been achieved. When robots encounter challenges beyond their capabilities, a viable solution is to include human operators in the loop, who can support robots through teleoperation, taking complete control or shared control.

This monograph focuses on a special form of shared control, namely mixed-initiative, where the final command to the robot is a weighted sum of the commands from the operator and the autonomous controller. The weights (fixed or adaptive), called authority allocation (AA) factors, decide who has more control authority over the robot. Several research groups use different methods to adapt the AA factors online and the benefits of adaptive mixed-initiative shared control have been well established in terms of task completion success and operator usability. However, stability of the overall shared control framework, with communication time-delays between the operator and the robot, is a field that has not been examined extensively. This monograph presents methods to improve performance and stability in shared control so that the possibilities of its applications can be widened. Firstly, methods to improve the haptic feedback performance of teleoperation are developed. Secondly, methods to stabilize adaptive shared control systems, while still ensuring high teleoperation performance, are proposed. The methods are validated on multiple robotic systems and they were applied in several projects, both in space and terrestrial domains.

With the aforementioned contributions, this monograph provides an overarching framework to improve synergy between humans and robots. The flexibility of the framework allows integration of existent teleoperation and shared control approaches, which further promotes synergy within the robotics community.

✦ Table of Contents

Series Foreword
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgements
Contents
Symbols and Abbreviations
Symbols
Abbreviations
1 Introduction
1.1 Motivation
1.2 Related Work
1.3 Research Gaps
1.4 Contribution and Overview
2 Fundamentals
2.1 Stability of Input-Output Systems
2.1.1 Input-Output Stability
2.1.2 Passivity
2.1.3 Passivity Tools and Methods
2.1.4 Passivity in Teleoperation of Manipulators
2.2 Transparency
2.2.1 Ideal Responses
2.2.2 Transparency Measures
2.2.3 Transparency Comparison
2.2.4 Discussion
2.3 Summary
3 Transparency Enhancement in Teleoperation
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Non-linear Local Force Feedback
3.2.1 Research Gap and Objectives
3.2.2 Proposed Method
3.2.3 Experiments and Results
3.2.4 Discussion
3.3 Explicit Force Control in Teleoperation
3.3.1 Research Gap and Objectives
3.3.2 Proposed Method
3.3.3 Experiments and Results
3.3.4 Discussion
3.4 Stability with Transparency Enhancement
3.4.1 Research Gap and Objectives
3.4.2 Proposed Method
3.4.3 Experiments and Results
3.4.4 Discussion
3.5 Summary
4 Multi-agent Adaptive Shared Control
4.1 Introduction
4.2 System-Driven Adaptive Shared Control
4.2.1 Research Gap and Objectives
4.2.2 Proposed Method
4.2.3 Experiments and Results
4.2.4 Discussion
4.3 Multi-agent Adaptive Control: Force Scaling
4.3.1 Research Gap and Objectives
4.3.2 Proposed Method
4.3.3 Experiments and Results
4.3.4 Discussion
4.4 Multi-agent Adaptive Control: Stiffness Scaling
4.4.1 Research Gap and Objectives
4.4.2 Proposed Method
4.4.3 Experiments and Results
4.4.4 Discussion
4.5 Summary
5 Stable and Transparent Shared Control Framework
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Passivity of Components
5.3 Experiments and Results
5.3.1 Stability
5.3.2 Transparency
5.3.3 Validation Experiment
5.3.4 Discussion
5.4 Summary
6 Applications
6.1 Applications in Space Domain
6.1.1 ISS-Ground Teleoperation
6.1.2 On-Orbit Servicing
6.1.3 In-Orbit Robotic Assembly
6.2 Applications in Terrestrial Domain
6.2.1 Aerial Inspection and Maintenance
6.3 Applications of Secondary Contributions
6.3.1 Whole-Body Control of Humanoid Robot
6.3.2 On-Ground Simulation of Satellites
6.3.3 Partitioned Shared Control for OOS
6.3.4 Compliance Control of Helicopter Manipulator
6.3.5 Explicit Force Control of Robots
6.4 Summary
7 Conclusions
Appendix References