Cooperative control of a human and a robot manipulator for positioning a cart on a frictionless plane

Robots may be expected to execute some tasks in cooperation with humans. Control systems for such robots should be appropriate to adapt to human characteristics in order to successfully accomplish the task. Pushing a cart on a frictionless plane in cooperation with a human is a basic example to such a task. To control the motion of an object from one point to another on a frictionless plane is impossible by only pushing in one direction without supporting it in the opposite direction, since as soon as the force is applied, the object will move without stopping its motion. In this paper, compliant cooperative positioning of a cart on a frictionless plane by a human and a manipulator is proposed using impedance control method with the parameters obtained from human–human cooperation.