Versatile and Dexterous Adaptive Control of Dual-Arm Robots for Personalized Assistance

In the near future, robots are expected to co-habit with human beings and work closely with us in the fields of manufacturing and medicine as well as in other aspects of our daily lives. Unfortunately, most of the current robot control technologies are designed for industrial robots which operate behind safeguarding and for predefined tasks, and thus are not able to cope with the varying tasks in unknown dynamic environments. This project will develop human-like adaptive control techniques to provide versatile and dexterous assistance to humans . In particular, the proposed new control techniques will enable robots to offer personalized assistance to different human users according to their motion patterns. For example, when the robot is interacting with an elderly person, it will automatically slow down; while it would speed up when working with a young man. To achieve these goals, this project will perform physiological studies on human control in the following two aspects: i) apply advanced control theory to analyze bimanually coordinated control strategies of human-beings in various scenarios; ii) investigate how human users develop efficient cooperation with a robot from a machine learning point of view .

The establishment of human control models can help us in at least two aspects: developing human-like adaptive controllers with high versatility and dexterity; and personalizing robot control to suit a specific human user. Based on this understanding on human bimanual control and human-human cooperation, this project will: (1) enable the robot to cope with different objects by bimanual haptic exploration; (2) enhance the robustness of robot control in interacting with different human users and in handling various objects; (3) improve robot manipulative dexterity at human-robot interaction scenarios and under geometric constraints/limitations caused by hardware and safety issues; (4) detect motion intention of human user and enhance dexterity with robot joint compliance; (5) introduce a measurement of user experience to quantify how human users are satisfied with the assistance offered by robots; and (6) enable the robot to identify and adapt to motor behavior patterns of a specific human user.

In the short term, this project will provide new control technologies for robotics researchers and builders to achieve better manipulation performance in terms of dexterity, versatility, and personalization. In the long run, it will benefit socially and economically to the UK by helping to boost the personal robot industry. It will further make contributions to UK by advancing its technology in the field of Robotics and Autonomous Systems, which is identified by the UK government as one of eight great British Technologies propelling the UK towards future growth.

This project will actively engage with a number of leading robot experts in the UK and will access their wider networks in both the academic and industrial communities. The proposed project has great potential in generating economic and social impacts in the following areas:

KNOWLEDGE:
The project proposes to create new knowledge on robot control and assistance, i.e., improve robot control performance in terms of dexterity and versatility, and develop a "from human, for human" control design approach to optimize and to personalize the assistance robots can provide according to user experience.

PEOPLE:
The proposed project will have a major impact on the PI who will carry out the research. The project will consolidate and extend the research skills and experiences the PI built in his previous Marie Curie Fellowship project. This project will be extremely useful for the PI as an early career academic to be equipped with a robot experimental platform, which can help him to build up his future research career. Through collaborations and academic visits, the project partners will also be able to gain new skills and knowledge by applying their experience and techniques in this new research direction. The requested robot equipment will also benefits students in PI's research team, providing them state-of-art experiment platform. In addition, this project will also create a few undergraduate-level final year projects and MSc final projects for the BEng/MSc programme delivered by Plymouth University. These projects will bring fresh new ideas into education, and will benefit students by exposing them to the very forefront of robotics research; preparing them for possible future careers in academic or industrial robotics.

ECONOMY:
Robotics and automation is one of the 'eight great technologies' identified by the UK government to propel the UK to future growth. A 2010 report from the Japan Robotics Association valued the robotics market at $24.9bn, with a forecasting value of $66.4bn by 2025 (over 50% of this growth is expected to come from personal robotics). Moreover, the International Robotics Federation forecasts sales of 15.6 million service and edutainment robot units between 2012-2015, for a market value of $5.9bn. Sales of assistance robots for the elderly and disabled, while at current stage relatively small at 4,600 units, are expected to "increase substantially within the next 20 years" (IFR, 2012). This project is of great importance in developing future robot control techniques, and will be particularly useful in scenarios where robots assist or cooperate with humans. The success of this project might provide significant commercial opportunities, and could benefit relevant businesses by delivering technologies developed from this project.

SOCIETY:
Versatile and dexterous robot control will help the robot to provide personalized assistance and has great potential in making benefits to society through various applications in which robots could support humans, e.g., manufacturing, construction, assembling, medical operation, etc. The improved control efficiency and optimized assistance would directly benefit human users.
In addition, extensive studies will be carried out in the project to investigate human motor control in order to analyze and understand human motions. This would also support the development of power assistance technologies for the disabled, and rehabilitation technologies to restore motor function for neuropathy patients.

The above mentioned impacts on society and economy are potential and long-term, and hence will not be fully delivered during the short duration of the proposed project, which only aims to lay the foundations for such impacts in the future.