Joshua Smith

The main focus of this research is to look at human-robot collaboration tasks that require both a human and robot together to achieve a task. This raises issues into how the two should communicate and how the collaboration can be modelled. Another key issue that is heavily involved in Human-Robot collaboration is safe and stable control of a robotic platform with controlled interaction/contact forces. This control of the forces at points of interaction require accurate models of the robotic system. Without this the performance of the controllers will be reduced and could require feedback gains that produce unsafe or unstable behaviours if not tuned correctly. As such Robotic Dynamic Identification techniques, such as adaptive controllers, will also be used to estimate this model and adapt for any changes due to the task.
Modelling collaboration, communication and the robot dynamics are key to produce a safe and robust system that can be used for collaboration based tasks such as pick and place, assembly tasks and more. As such more overview of the past and current research in these areas will be performed and expanded upon.