Project Description

This is a project within the Call for IRI MdM Internal Projects 2018, a call for R&D projects addressed to IRI early career researchers, under the María de Maeztu Unit of Excellence Programme.

The Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial has been pushing over the last years towars human-assistive robotics. Within this context, human-robot physical interaction is a key component for achieving better interaction for tasks like dressing people. Our institute has then been working on learning motion and control in a way that the robots are able to imitate and/or improve a motion taught to them, while using a so-called compliant controller, i.e.: a controller that can acomodate to the presence of human contact without exerting too much force, which might be dangerous for the human.
In this project, we we propose to hire a bachelor/master thesis student in order to go one step further in compliant control in the Perception and Manipulation Lab. The student will be supervised by the PI, A. Colomé. The objective is to design and implement controllers with variable stiffness that can continuosly adapt with different rigidity to the phases of motion. Moreover, performing dimensionality reduction on the motion characterization leaves space for an uncontrolled part of the joint torque space. Such uncontrolled space can have its motion restricted, or be exploited in order to improve manipulation skills, possibility to be explored yet. This proposal also aims at submitting a paper to ICRA 2020 in Paris, and attending the conference if accepted.