Interactive manipulation between a human and a humanoid: When robots control human arm motion

In this paper we present a novel approach in human/robot collaboration, where the robot controls not only its arm but also the human´s by means of functional electrical stimulation (FES). The task is described by using the cooperative dual task-space approach, providing a considerable degree of invariance with respect to the morphology of the agents involved. Experimental results in a “ball in the hoop” task using healthy blindfolded subjects show the validity of the approach and encourages further experiments with impaired subjects, for instance hemiplegic or quadriplegic patients.