Human interaction by a wheelchair

Both human and robot will carry out a task which is not realizable by only each of them. From the trajectory planning by the robot and the input by human, operation of robot is newly determined. Robot's intention is respected when the direction to which robot wants to go originally and human's input are near. On the other hand, the input by human is respected when those values are far. In order to make robot do soft operation, commands of human by joy stick are changed into the virtual force commands instead of position commands. In order for robot to play an active part in society, soft operation is required also to environment. Reaction torque observer is implemented in robot to detect environmental disturbance. Environmental disturbance is classified into the mode of translational direction and rotational direction. As a result, the adaptive force control in every mode is realized. The proposed method is applied to wheelchair. As a result, operationality and ride quality axe improved. The experimental results show viability of the proposed method.