Enhancing Flexibility and Adaptability in Conjoined Human-Robot Industrial Tasks with a Minimalist Physical Interface

TL;DR

This paper introduces a minimalist physical interface for human-robot collaboration in industrial tasks, enhancing mobility, ease of coupling, and control simplicity, validated through experiments with human subjects.

Contribution

The paper presents a new industrial-like, easy-to-use physical interface that improves mobility and control for human-robot collaboration in industrial environments.

Findings

Enhanced loco-manipulation capabilities demonstrated

Improved usability and reduced physical load confirmed

Interface allows easy coupling/decoupling and local operation

Abstract

This paper presents a physical interface for collaborative mobile manipulators in industrial manufacturing and logistics applications. The proposed work builds on our earlier MOCA-MAN interface, through which an operator could be physically coupled to a mobile manipulator to be assisted in performing daily activities. The previous interface was based on a magnetic clamp attached to one arm of the user for the coupling stage, and a bracelet based on EMG sensors on the other arm for human-robot communication via gestures. The new interface instead presents the following additions: i) An industrial-like design that allows the worker to couple/decouple easily and to operate mobile manipulators locally; ii) A simplistic communication channel via a simple buttons board that allows controlling the robot with one hand only; iii) The interface offers enhanced loco-manipulation capabilities that do not compromise the worker mobility. In addition, an experimental evaluation with six human subjects is carried out to analyze the enhanced locomotion and flexibility of the proposed interface in terms of mobility constraint, usability, and physical load reduction.