Programming by touch: the different way of human-robot interaction

Mobile service robots will share their workspaces, e.g., offices, hospitals, or households, with humans. Thus, a direct contact between man and machine is inevitable. Robots equipped with appropriate sensors can sense the touch. In this paper, we present how an unskilled user can intuitively teach the lightweight robot at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Weßling, Germany, just by touching the arm. Programming by "touch" is very intuitive as you take the robot by the hand and demonstrate the movements. This feature can also be used to interact with the service robot while executing a task. Therefore, if our seven-degrees-of-freedom robot arm senses a touch, it will react by an evasive motion of the touched links while keeping the orientation of the tool center point.