Low-cost whole-body touch interaction for manual motion control of a mobile service robot

Abstract

Mobile service robots for interaction with people need to be easily maneuverable by their users, even if physical restrictions make a manual pushing and pulling impossible. In this paper, we present a low cost approach that allows for intuitive tactile control of a mobile service robot while preserving constraints of a differential drive and obstacle avoidance. The robot's enclosure has been equipped with capacitive touch sensors able to recognize proximity of the user's hands. By simulating forces applied by the touching hands, a desired motion command for the robot is derived and combined with other motion objectives in a local motion planner (based on Dynamic Window Approach in our case). User tests showed that this haptic control is intuitively understandable and outperforms a solution using direction buttons on the robot's touch screen. © Springer International Publishing 2013.