Obstacle Avoidance using a Capacitive Skin for Safe Human-Robot Interaction

The paper describes a control framework using a capacitive skin for advanced and safe human-robot interactions. The skin consists of high density capacitive sensors which are able to detect objects at close distance. We propose a multitask kinematic control scheme which manages at once the control task of the end-effector and the obstacle avoidance task by using the capacitive skin measurements. To solve the multiobjective problem, a Weight-Prioritized solution based on a QP formalism is adopted. The robustness of the kinematic controller is enhanced by adding a local joint reconfiguration when the robot moves close to a singularity. Experimental results on manipulator arm equipped with the capacitive sensors are presented in realistic situations of human-robot interactions.