Title:

Passivity-Based Cooperative Control of Human-Robotic Network

Abstract:

Robotic coordination tasks in uncertain environments require us to take advantage of human operators’ strengths such as cognitive skills and flexibility. These needs motivate increasing research interests on semi-autonomous operation of multiple robots. One of the most promising design tools for such semi-autonomous systems is passivity. In the research field of bilateral teleoperation, the human operator is treated as a passive system and control architectures are designed while ensuring stability based on this assumption. In this talk, we discuss human operator enabled positions/velocities synchronization of robotic network to human desired values. A feedback loop connecting the human operator and the robotic network is designed based on passivity. Then, asymptotic synchronization of robotic network to human desired position/velocity is demonstrated by assuming passivity of a human operator decision process. The passivity assumption is investigated through experiments on a human-in-the-loop simulation. Furthermore, we address how to avoid instability caused by inter-robot communication delay by utilizing a passivation technique. Finally, we demonstrate the above control schemes and discuss human behaviors in experiments.

Short Bio:

Junya Yamauchi received B.Eng. degree from Nagoya University and M. Eng. degree from Tokyo Institute of Technology. He is currently a Ph.D. student of Department of Mechanical and Control Engineering at Tokyo Institute of Technology. His research interests include cooperative control of human-robotic network and vision-based estimation and control.