A constraint-based programming approach to physical human-robot interaction

This work aims to extend the constraint-based formalism iTaSC for scenarios where physical human-robot interaction plays a central role, which is the case for e.g. surgical robotics, rehabilitation robotics and household robotics. To really exploit the potential of robots in these scenarios, it should be possible to enforce force and geometrical constraints in an easy and flexible way. iTaSC allows to express such constraints in different frames expressed in arbitrary spaces and to obtain control setpoints in a systematic way. In previous implementations of iTaSC, industrial velocity-controlled robots were considered. This work presents an extension of the iTaSC-framework that allows to take advantage of the back-drivability of a robot thus avoiding the use of force sensors. Then, as a casestudy, the iTaSC-framework is used to formulate a (positionposition) teleoperation scheme. The theoretical findings are experimentally validated using a PR2 robot.