82 accepted papers
Wearable devices like exoskeletons are designed to reduce excessive loads on specific joints of the body. Specifically, single- or two-degrees-of-freedom (DOF) upper-body industrial exoskeletons typically focus on compensating for the strain on the elbow and shoulder joints. However, during daily ac…
Industry 5.0 focuses on human-centric collaboration between humans and robots, prioritizing safety, comfort, and trust. This study introduces a data-driven framework to assess trust using behavioral indicators. The framework employs a Preference-Based Optimization algorithm to generate trust-enhanci…
Wearable assistive devices that monitor muscle fatigue reduce the risk of work-related musculoskeletal disorders, enhance rehabilitation outcomes, and extend operational time by optimizing the power consumption of the device. This work proposes a muscle fatigue-aware controller (MFAC) for a semi-rig…
Wearable devices like exoskeletons are designed to reduce excessive loads on specific joints of the body. Specifically, single- or two-degrees-of-freedom (DOF) upper-body industrial exoskeletons typically focus on compensating for the strain on the elbow and shoulder joints. However, during daily ac
Although robotic applications increasingly demand versatile and dynamic object handling, most existing techniques are predominantly focused on grasp-based manipulation, limiting their applicability in non-prehensile tasks. To address this need, this study introduces a Deep Deterministic Policy Gradi
Walking aids for individuals with musculoskeletal frailty or motor disabilities must ensure adequate physical support and assistance to their users. To this end, sensor-enabled human state monitoring and estimation are crucial. This paper proposes an innovative approach to assessing users' stability
In physical human-robot interaction, force feedback has been the most common sensing modality to convey the human intention to the robot. It is widely used in admittance control to allow the human to direct the robot. However, it cannot be used in scenarios where direct force feedback is not availab
Industry 5.0 focuses on human-centric collaboration between humans and robots, prioritizing safety, comfort, and trust. This study introduces a data-driven framework to assess trust using behavioral indicators. The framework employs a Preference-Based Optimization algorithm to generate trust-enhanci
Robotic manipulation in dynamic environments often requires seamless transitions between different grasp types to maintain stability and efficiency. However, achieving smooth and adaptive grasp transitions remains a challenge, particularly when dealing with external forces and complex motion constra
Programming by demonstration is a strategy to simplify the robot programming process for non-experts via human demonstrations. However, its adoption for bimanual tasks is an underexplored problem due to the complexity of hand coordination, which also hinders data recording. This letter presents a no
Partial hand amputations significantly affect the physical and psychosocial well-being of individuals, yet intuitive control of externally powered prostheses remains an open challenge. To address this gap, we developed a force-controlled prosthetic finger activated by electromyography (EMG) signals.
Object re-identification and tracking lay the foundation for various computer vision and robotics applications. In this study, we propose a method for personalizing a neural network to enhance and continuously adapt the re-identification of a specific target. Employing an unsupervised continual lear
Accurate and physically feasible human motion prediction is crucial for safe and seamless human-robot collaboration. While recent advancements in human motion capture enable real-time pose estimation, the practical value of many existing approaches is limited by the lack of future predictions and co
To enhance robots’ applicability in real-world scenarios, it is essential to establish a complex and multi-tasking behaviour, inspired by human nature. To this purpose, from a hardware perspective, a high number of degrees of freedom is necessary, as is the case for humanoids and collaborative mobil…
Mobile robotic platforms have gained increasing popularity across various fields; however, achieving intuitive physical interaction between these robots and humans remains an ongoing area of exploration. In this study, we proposed a novel variable admittance model designed for robotic mobile platfor
Preserving and encouraging mobility in the elderly and adults with chronic conditions is of paramount importance. However, existing walking aids are either inadequate to provide sufficient support to users’ stability or too bulky and poorly maneuverable to be used outside hospital environments. In a…
Walking aid robots have been developed for elderly people or patients facing difficulties while walking. However, most of them are designed only for flat ground, must rely on handles, and have drawbacks such as oscillation and lack of stability. The primary goal of this research is to improve the tr
This work presents an ergonomic and interactive human-robot collaboration (HRC) framework, through which new collaborative skills are extracted from a one-shot human demonstration and learned through Riemannian dynamic movement primitives (DMP). The proposed framework responds to human-robot interac
In scenarios of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), it is often assumed that the robot should cooperate with the closest individual or that only one person is present. However, in real-life situations, such as shop floor operations, this assumption may not hold. Thus, it becomes necessary for a robot to…
An emerging trend in the field of human-robot collaboration is the disassembly of end-of-life products. Safety is a crucial requirement of the disassembly process since worn-out or damaged products could break, possibly resulting in dangerous behavior of the robot. To protect the user from such beha…
In this letter, a multi-modal learning and control framework is proposed for the control of a supernumerary robotic limb (SRL). The SRL is a wearable robotic arm designed to enhance the manipulation capabilities of its human user and extend the workspace by reaching greater heights. The multi-modal
Ground reaction force information, which includes the location of the center of pressure (COP) and vertical ground reaction force (vGRF), has various applications, such as in the gait assessment of patients post-injury or in the control of robot prostheses and exoskeleton devices. At the beginning o
This letter proposes a novel theoretical framework for promoting trust in human-robot collaboration (HRC). The framework exploits Preference-Based Optimization (PBO) and focuses on three key interaction parameters: robot velocity profile, human-robot separation distance, and vertical proximity to th
For mobile robots, navigating cluttered or dynamic environments often necessitates non-prehensile manipulation, particularly when faced with objects that are too large, irregular, or fragile to grasp. The unpredictable behavior and varying physical properties of these objects significantly complicat
This paper presents a framework to navigate visually impaired people through unfamiliar environments by means of a mobile manipulator. The Human-Robot system consists of three key components: a mobile base, a robotic arm, and the human subject who gets guided by the robotic arm via physically coupli…
Reinforcement learning (RL) has emerged as a promising paradigm in complex and continuous robotic tasks, however, safe exploration has been one of the main challenges, especially in contact-rich manipulation tasks in unstructured environments. Focusing on this issue, we propose <bold xmlns:mml="http
This work presents a reactive control strategy for loading and sudden unloading of an elbow effort-compensation device controlled in force. Through this control strategy, in addition to an individual's forearm weight, an external load can be detected and adaptively compensated via a feed-forward for
This manuscript introduces an object deformability-agnostic framework for co-carrying tasks that are shared between a person and multiple robots. Our approach allows the full control of the co-carrying trajectories by the person while sharing the load with multiple robots depending on the size and t…
Human-robot collaborative disassembly is an emerging trend in the sustainable recycling process of electronic and mechanical products. It requires the use of advanced technologies to assist workers in repetitive physical tasks and deal with creaky and potentially damaged components. Nevertheless, wh…
This paper proposes a combined optimization and learning method for impact-friendly, non-prehensile catching of objects at non-zero velocity. Through a constrained Quadratic Programming problem, the method generates optimal trajectories up to the contact point between the robot and the object to min…
Handing objects to humans is an essential capability for collaborative robots. Previous research works on human-robot handovers focus on facilitating the performance of the human partner and possibly minimising the physical effort needed to grasp the object. However, altruistic robot behaviours may
Vibration suppression is an important skill for future robots that will collaborate with humans in industrial settings. The vibration through physical interaction is a common problem in such settings, especially in operations involving hand-held vibrating tools. The existing human-robot collaboratio…
Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) are one of the major cause of injuries and absenteeism at work. These lead to important cost in the manufacturing industry. Human-robot collaboration can help decreasing this issue by appropriately distributing the tasks and decreasing the workload of the…
This letter proposes a hybrid learning and optimization framework for mobile manipulators for complex and physically interactive tasks. The framework exploits an admittance-type physical interface to obtain intuitive and simplified human demonstrations and Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM)/Gaussian Mixtu
This letter presents a novel interaction planning method that exploits impedance tuning techniques in response to environmental uncertainties and unpredictable conditions using haptic information only. The proposed algorithm plans the robot's trajectory based on the haptic interaction with the envir
Teleoperation is a widely adopted strategy to control robotic manipulators executing complex tasks that require highly dexterous movements and critical high-level intelligence. Classical teleoperation schemes are based on either joystick control, or on more intuitive interfaces which map directly th
Teleoperation offers the possibility to combine human intelligence with robot power and endurance, making it a perfect solution for hostile-for-human environments. Nonetheless, when it concerns prolonged and repetitive operations, classical teleoperation interfaces that replicate one-to-one human co
The field of physical human-robot interaction has dramatically evolved in the last decades. As a result, the robotic system's requirements have become more challenging, including personalized behavior for different tasks and users. Various machine learning techniques have been proposed to give the r…
Even though cobots have high potential in bringing several benefits in the manufacturing and logistic processes, their rapid (re-)deployment in changing environments is still limited. To enable fast adaptation to new product demands and to boost the fitness of the human workers to the allocated task…
This paper presents a physical interface for collaborative mobile manipulators in industrial manufacturing and logistics applications. The proposed work builds on our earlier MOCA-MAN interface, through which an operator could be physically coupled to a mobile manipulator to be assisted in performin…
In this work, we introduce an adaptive control framework for human-robot collaborative transportation of objects with unknown deformation behaviour. The proposed framework takes as input the haptic information transmitted through the object, and the kinematic information of the human body obtained f…
Impacts and other non-smooth behaviors are usually unwanted in robotic applications. However, several industrial tasks such as deburring, removing excess material, and assembling/fitting, involve impacts between objects, which can benefit from robotic automation due to the risks posed to human healt…
This paper presents the design and development of a robotic system to give physical assistance to the elderly or people with neurological disorders such as Ataxia or Parkin-son's. In particular, we propose using a mobile collaborative robot with an interaction-assistive whole-body interface to help…
Safety is one of the most fundamental aspects of robotics, especially when it comes to collaborative robots (cobots) that are expected to physically interact with humans. Although a large body of literature has focused on safety-related aspects for fixed-based cobots, a low effort has been put into
In hybrid industrial environments, workers' comfort and positive perception of safety are essential requirements for successful acceptance and usage of collaborative robots. This paper proposes a novel human-robot interaction framework in which the robot behaviour is adapted online according to the…
The recognition of actions performed by humans and the anticipation of their intentions are important enablers to yield sociable and successful collaboration in human-robot teams. Meanwhile, robots should have the capacity to deal with multiple objectives and constraints, arising from the collaborat…
The use of powerful robotics tools in modeling and analysis of complex biomechanical systems has led to the development of computationally effective and scalable human models. Our early work in this regard focused on a humanoids-based rigid-body modeling of human kinodynamics to monitor instantaneou
In this work, we propose a framework to address the autonomous impedance regulation problem of robots in a class of constrained manipulation tasks. In this framework, a human arm endpoint stiffness model is used to extract the task stiffness geometry along the constrained trajectory, which is then e
Prolonged remote tele-locomanipulation of multi degrees-of-freedom mobile manipulators requires a compromise between the system’s performance and the operator’s ergonomics. Neglecting this demand can significantly affect either the task completion or the level of comfort to achieve it. However, the…
The use of assistive technologies in industrial environments to improve human ergonomics and comfort in repetitive and high effort tasks have increased considerably in the last decade. Predominantly, the goal is to provide additional physical support through lightweight and wearable devices, without…
Today’s robots are expected to fulfill different requirements originated from executing complex tasks in uncertain environments, often in collaboration with humans. To deal with this type of multi-objective control problem, hierarchical least-square optimization techniques are often employed, defini…
In this work, we introduce the principle, design and mechatronics of Exo-Muscle, a novel assistive device for the knee joint. Different from the existing systems based on rigid exoskeleton structures or soft-tendon driven approaches, the proposed device leverages a new semi-rigid principle that expl
This work presents a unified approach for hybrid motion control of the Mobile Collaborative Robotic Assistant (MOCA). The objective is to develop a loco-manipulation controller, enabling various couplings of the arm and the mobile base movements, and particularly their purely decoupled motions. The
The objective of this paper is to present a personalisable human ergonomics framework that integrates a method for real-time identification of a human model and an ergonomics monitoring function. The human model is based on a floating base structure and on a Statically Equivalent Serial Chain (SESC)…
Full teleoperation of mobile robots during the execution of complex tasks not only demands high cognitive and physical effort but also generates less optimal trajectories compared to autonomous controllers. However, the use of the latter in cluttered and dynamically varying environments is still an…
In this work, we propose a novel visuo-haptic guidance interface to enable mobile collaborative robots to follow human instructions in a way understandable by non-experts. The interface is composed of a haptic admittance module and a human visual tracking module. The haptic guidance enables an indiv…
The objective of this paper is to create a new collaborative robotic system that subsumes the advantages of mobile manipulators and supernumerary limbs. By exploiting the reconfiguration potential of a MObile Collaborative robot Assistant (MOCA), we create a collaborative robot that can function aut…
In this paper, a novel human-robot collaborative framework for mixed case palletizing is presented. The framework addresses several challenges associated with the detection and localisation of boxes and pallets through visual perception algorithms, high-level optimisation of the collaborative effort…
The deployment of industrial robotic cells based on lean manufacturing principles enables the development of fast-reconfigurable assembly lines in which human and robotic agents collaborate to achieve a shared task. To ensure the effective coordination of the shared effort, each task must be decompo
Among the numerous risk factors associated to work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSD), repetitive and monotonous movements with light-weight tools are one of the most frequently cited. Such tasks may indeed result in the excessive accumulation of local muscle fatigue, causing severe injuries i…
This letter presents a novel teleoperation interface that enables remote loco-manipulation control of a MObile Collaborative robotic Assistant (MOCA). MOCA is a new research platform developed at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), which is composed of a lightweight manipulator arm, a Pisa/II
Humans commonly exploit interaction with the environment constraints to assist the execution of the loco-manipulation tasks they perform. One particular example is the exploration of contacts during manipulation to relax the loading of those arm joints that are not directly involved in the generatio…
In this paper, we propose a control framework for a multi-human and mobile-robot collaborative team, that takes into account the co-workers' ergonomic requirements as well as the demand for high flexibility in the manufacturing industries. The new MObile Collaborative robotic Assistant (MOCA), which…
Nowadays, robots are expected to enter in various application scenarios and interact with unknown and dynamically changing environments. This highlights the need for creating autonomous robot behaviours to explore such environments, identify their characteristics and adapt, and build knowledge for f…
Collaborative robots are often designed with limited power and force capacity, with the aim to provide affordable solutions and ensure human safety in case of accidental collisions and impacts. If a task requires a power beyond this capacity, or is performed repeatedly over long periods, such limits…
Complex interactions with unstructured environments require the application of appropriate restoring forces in response to the imposed displacements. Impedance control techniques provide effective solutions to achieve this, however, their quasi-static performance is highly dependent on the choice of…
This letter proposes a novel technique for the real-time estimation of the human feet ground reaction forces (GRFs) and centers of pressure (CoP) from the whole-body CoP and body configuration. The estimated variables are used for the estimation of the overloading torques in human joints during doub
The reduction of muscular strength in elderly people and patients with neurological movement disorders drastically reduces the hand autonomy for performing several daily activities. This letter presents preliminary results towards a novel supernumerary hand system, i.e., the SoftHand X, that aims to
This letter proposes a novel human–robot collaboration (HRC) control approach to alert and reduce the static joint torque overloading of a human partner while executing shared tasks with a robot. Using a preidentified statically equivalent serial chain model, variations of the centre-of-pressure and
In this letter, we present a novel wearable feedback interface with the aim to improve human ergonomics in the execution of heavy or repetitive industrial tasks. The proposed interface incorporates a reduced-complexity and real-time model for the estimation of human joints' load variations, based on
This letter presents a novel controller for robotic hands, which regulates the grasp stiffness by manipulating the pose and the finger joint stiffness of hands with multiple degrees of freedom while guaranteeing grasp stability. The proposed approach is inspired by the observations of human motor be
In this paper, we propose a novel method for selective management of muscle fatigue in human-robot co-manipulation. The proposed framework enables the detection of excessive fatigue levels of an individual muscle group while executing a certain task, and provides anticipatory robotic responses to di…
The endpoint stiffness of the human arm has been long recognized as a key component ensuring the quasi-static stability of the arm physical interactions with the external world. Similarly, the understanding of the joint stiffness behavior can provide complementary insights, e.g., on the underlying s
In this letter, we propose a novel method that enables the robot to autonomously devise an appropriate control strategy from human demonstrations without a prior knowledge of the demonstrated task. The method is primarily based on observing the patterns and consistency in the observed dataset. This
Tele-operation in the presence of environmental constraints is a well-studied problem, where the difficulties of the transparency-stability trade-off have been elucidated by several important studies. While at the state-of-art, passivity-based stabilizers appear to provide the best insight and comma…
The tutor-tutee hand-in-hand teaching may be the most effective approach for a tutee to acquire new motor skills. Repetitive nature of such procedures in a group setting usually results in a high labour cost and time inefficiency. Potential solution can be utilizing robotic platforms playing the rol…
In this work, to guarantee the Pisa/IIT SoftHand's grasp robustness against slippage, three reflex control modes, namely Current, Pose and Impedance, are implemented and experimentally evaluated. Towards this objective, ThimbleSense fingertip sensors are designed and integrated into the thumb and mi
In this work a novel synergy-based bilateral tele-manipulation strategy is introduced. The proposed algorithm has been primarily developed to remotely control the Pisa/IIT SoftHand (SH) using a 3-finger hand exoskeleton as master device. With a single actuator and a sensory system limited to a posit
This paper presents a novel approach for human-robot cooperation in tasks with dynamic uncertainties. The essential element of the proposed method is a multi-modal interface that provides the robot with the feedback about the human motor behaviour in real-time. The human muscle activity measurements…
Effective and stable execution of a remote manipulation task in an uncertain environment requires that the task force and position trajectories of the slave robot be appropriately commanded. To achieve this goal, in teleimpedance control, a reference command which consists of the stiffness and posit…
It is well known that kinematics can significantly affect the manipulation capabilities of robotic arms, traditionally illustrated by performance indices such as workspace volume, kinematic and force manipulability, and isotropy within the arm workspace. In the case of dual-arm systems and bimanual…
The stiffness ellipsoid, i.e. the locus of task-space forces obtained corresponding to a deformation of unit norm in different directions, has been extensively used as a powerful representation of robot interaction capabilities. The size and shape of the stiffness ellipsoid at a given end-effector p…