Integration of heterogeneity for human-friendly robotic operations

The objective of this paper is to develop an analytical scheme to integrate the heterogeneity of human and robot functions to achieve a human-friendly robotic operations. The heterogeneity of human and robot functions can be characterized by the fact that humans are intelligent while robots are fast , powerful and accurate. Humans can use their knowledge and experience to q uickly respond to unexpected events, which makes it easy for humans to deal with unstructured environments. In contrast, robots can easily enhance the mechanical power of humans and the ability of humans to work remotely. The refore, robots are capable of performing precise and repetitive tasks at hi gh speed or in a hazardous environment. The important issue, in light of hu man/robot heterogeneity, is how to plan and control a robotic operation suc h that the human and the robot can cooperate in a complementary manner. Thu s, a task which cannot be done by either human or robot alone can be perfor med efficiently and robustly by both. This paper introduces a new paradigm for human/robot interactive systems, heterogeneous function-based human/rob ot cooperation. A new perceptive action reference frame has been developed in the paper. It matches human perception and robot sensory measurement, an d provides a platform for modeling the human/robot cooperative operations. The theoretical results presented in the paper have laid down a foundation for stability analysis as well as a planning and control system design of h uman/robot integrated systems. The implementations and experimental results have clearly demonstrated the advantages of proposed methods.