Object transportation task by a human and a mobile robot

This paper addresses the human-robot cooperation problem on object transportation tasks, particularly when a human grasps one side of the object while the other extremity is carried by the robot. The robot is equipped with a pair of infrared sensors used to obtain the load´s status and apply it as a feedback to accomplish a specific task. A nonlinear controller is proposed to allow the robot to perform coordinated movements and thus help a human to carry an object from an initial position to a final goal with a defined position and orientation. The controller is proved to be asymptotically stable at the equilibrium point, which guarantees the accomplishment of the task. In contrast to other methods, the approach presented in this paper does not use either force or visual information to estimate the status of the robot and the object. In order to validate the proposed method some experiments are shown.