Online state estimation of flexible beams based on particle filtering and camera images

In this paper we present a system for human-robot cooperation where a flexible beam is handled by a human and robot. We use a vision based state estimator to coordinate the robot with the human. The state estimator is based on particle filtering, and the dynamical behaviour of the flexible beam is described by a finite element model, more specifically the absolute nodal coordinate formulation. We present the FEM based dynamical model, the state estimator and demonstrate through experiments that it can be used in human-robot cooperation for tasks like load sharing.