Shared Autonomy via Variable Impedance Control and Virtual Potential Fields for Encoding Human Demonstrations*

This article introduces a framework for complex human-robot collaboration tasks, such as the co-manufacturing of furniture. For these tasks, it is essential to encode tasks from human demonstration and reproduce these skills in a compliant and safe manner. Therefore, two key components are addressed in this work: motion generation and shared autonomy. We propose a motion generator based on a time-invariant potential field, capable of encoding wrench profiles, complex and closed-loop trajectories, and additionally incorporates obstacle avoidance. Additionally, the paper addresses shared autonomy (SA) which enables synergetic collaboration between human operators and robots by dynamically allocating authority. Variable impedance control (VIC) and force control are employed, where impedance and wrench are adapted based on the human-robot autonomy factor derived from interaction forces. System passivity is ensured by an energy-tank based task passivation strategy. The framework’s efficacy is validated through simulations and an experimental study employing a Franka Emika Research 3 robot.