A Passivity Based Framework for Safe Physical Human Robot Interaction

In this paper, the problem of making a safe compliant contact between a human and an assistive robot is considered. Users with disabilities have a need to utilize their assistive robots for physical human-robot interaction (PHRI) during certain activities of daily living (ADLs). Specifically, we propose a hybrid force/velocity/attitude control for a PHRI system based on measurements from a 6-axis force/torque sensor mounted on the robot wrist. While automatically aligning the end-effector surface with the unknown environmental (human) surface, a desired commanded force is applied in the normal direction while following desired velocity commands in the tangential directions. A Lyapunov based stability analysis is provided to prove both convergence as well as passivity of the interaction to ensure both performance and safety. Simulation as well as experimental results verify the performance and robustness of the proposed hybrid controller in the presence of dynamic uncertainties as well as safe physical human-robot interactions for a kinematically redundant robotic manipulator.