Object handling control between a balancing robot and a human operator

This paper presents an object handling control between a mobile manipulator and a human operator. The robot has been built for serving humans in the home environment. It has two wheels to maintain balance and is able to make contact with a human operator via an object. A force control method is applied to maintain stable object-handling tasks. As the human operator pushes and pulls the object, the robot also reacts to maintain contact with the object by pulling and pushing against the object to regulate a specified force. Switching control from position control to force control or vice versa is presented. Experimental studies are performed to evaluate the feasibility of the object-handling task between the balancing mobile robot manipulator and the human operator.