USER-FIRENDLY INTERFACE FOR TRAJECTORY LEARNING OF AN ASSISTIVE MOBILE MANIPULATOR

This paper presents a novel method to enable non-expert operators to drive a mobile manipulator and to teach new trajectories through interaction with the robotic arm. The paper describes how the generator of velocity reference is implemented. It takes as input the force applied by the user to the robotic arm and, through some post-processing, produces a velocity reference related to the input. The paper also investigates which input can be used as a reference signal and the post-processing done to obtain a velocity reference. A comparison between torque and force input is presented, explaining the reason that leads to the use of torque. The proposed method is useful to increase the number of people that can drive the mobile manipulator and reconfigure the trajectory. Although this method has been developed to increase the usability of the Paquitop platform among the medical staff in the hospital environment, the strength is that it can be implemented and used for all mobile manipulators that perform tasks of personal assistance.