Develop the socially human-aware navigation system using dynamic window approach and optimize cost function for autonomous medical robot

Abstract

In previous works, the perceived safety and comfort are currently not the principal objectives of all industries, especially robotics system. It might lead not to take psychological safety into consideration of adjusting robot behavior, hence, the human-robot interaction lacks of ease and naturalness. In this paper, a novel framework of human’s zones to ensure safety for social interactions in human-machine system is proposed. In the context of service robot in hospital, machine should not produce any actions that may induce worry, surprise or bother. To maintain the comfortable interaction, an algorithm to update human’s state into personal space is developed. Then, a motion model of robot is demonstrated with assumption of the reference path under segmentation. Dynamic Window Approach is employed for motion planning while Optimize Cost function searches the shortest path in a graph. To validate our approach, three test cases (without human-aware framework, with basic model of human’s zone and with extended personal space) are carried out in the same context. Moreover, three interactive indicators, for instance collision index (CI), interaction index (CII) and relative velocity of robot (Vr), are analyzed in different situations. Lack of human-aware framework, robot might break all thresholds and meet the potential collisions. While robot with basic model of human’s zone in its perception maintains the physically safe thresholds but not socially, it respects whole criterions in both physical constraints and social relations. As a result, our findings are useful for robot’s navigation in presence of human while the socially comfortable interaction is guaranteed.