Behavioral Dynamics-based Impedance Control for Collision Avoidance of Human-Following Robots

Human-following is an important part of man-machine interaction and has wide application value. In Human-following, the following stability, human comfort and obstacle avoidance are considered comprehensively. To solve the above problems, we propose a human behavioral dynamics-based impedance control for collision avoidance of human-following robot, which take the comfort and the following stability into consideration. Specifically, an impedance control method combined with virtual interaction force is introduced to simulate the human social dynamic characteristics to improve the comfort of human-following. The uniformly ultimately bounded property of the impedance control is proved by using the Lyapunov stability theorem. Moreover, an obstacle component constructed by behavioral dynamics is proposed to extend the impedance controller for collision avoidance. Behavioral dynamics compared with an artificial potential field method possess better collision avoidance performance during humanfollowing. The simulation results validate that the human-following system integrated with collision avoidance is effective.