A wheeled-mobile robot with human interaction based on force control

In this paper, a mobile robot carrier is designed and controlled to carry an elderly person or a weak person. The carrier robot is a wheeled mobile robot driven with applied forces induced by an operator. The applied force can be sensed by a force sensor and the measured force is filtered by the impedance function to generate the desired velocity to drive motors. Then the inner loop PID controller is required to follow the desired velocity which is the reference input to the system. The impedance function is designed to make driving condition comfortable for the driver by smoothing out instant start and stop. The feasibility of applying the force control method to the mobile robot has been tested by conducting experimental studies of riding the carrier to evaluate comforts.