CoBot

Robots appear nowadays as a solution to help humans in the factory, at the hospital or at home but the conditions of efficient secure interactions are not understood yet. Humans are soft, flexible and their behaviours have been optimised through learning mechanisms and through evolution. Despite great advances in robotics, no robots can be involved in secured collaborative load-carriage tasks with humans. At best, the robot is able to follow or to drive the manoeuvre, but in the first case, the robot is no more than a wheelbarrow (but is much more expensive) and in the second case, either the human does not accept to be driven or he has to compensate for the lack of reactivity and manoeuvrability of the robot. To avoid these problems, we must find a way for robots to collaborate safely and in real time with humans.Thus, a major challenge facing roboticists is to developed anthropomorphic systems able to interact safety with humans. Biomechanicists, especially those interested in human movement try to understand the mechanical parameters that underlie motor control in humans. Over the past decade, swaps between both specialities strengthen exponentially around these issues of modelling, simulations and generation of human motions. Robotics brings powerful tools to compute dynamic equations of treelike poly-articulated systems and researchers in human movement analysis bring key elements for the mechanical parameters which must be taken into account to reduce the complexity of the musculoskeletal system. It’s precisely this whole process of experimentation on the one hand and simulation on the other hand with a steady back and forth between the experts in the field that we wish to undertake here. We designed this project to explore real-time collaboration strategies used in a load-carriage task performed by two human subjects and to transfer the results to a human-humanoid working pair. As an intermediate step, we will use simulations to test our assumptions regarding the optimization of their collaborative behaviours. This project will bring together three teams with complementary skills in biomechanics (LAAS, CRCA), neuroscience (DIMPS-IRISSE), motor control and collective behavior (DIMPS-IRISSE, LAAS, CRCA), movement simulation (LAAS-CRCA) and robotics (LAAS). Thanks to high level preliminary works involving the three partners and several co-authored publications, we have the opportunity to collaborate to 1) determine the biomechanical and physiological biomarkers of the movement optimization (i.e., which parameter are optimized) and determine the synergies and collaboration functions, 2) simulate the collective load carriage task using a human-robot model by implementing the cost-functions and synergies previously determined and 3) apply these rules to drive a real humanoid robot. Here we have the opportunity to use Pyrène, the first humanoid robot integrating high power actuators. Financial grants are request to complete the present experimental setup and conduct an exhaustive full body analysis of the two subjects carrying a load together. To insure a good interdisciplinary, 2 PhD and 3 Master will be recruited and co-supervised. The total amount requested is 372k€ and represents 35% of the total amount dedicated to this project.