Reactive human–robot collaborative manipulation of deformable linear objects using a new topological latent control model

• Published in: Robotics and computer-integrated manufacturing 2024-08, Vol.88, p.102727, Article 102727
• Main Authors: Zhou, Peng, Zheng, Pai, Qi, Jiaming, Li, Chengxi, Lee, Hoi-Yin, Duan, Anqing, Lu, Liang, Li, Zhongxuan, Hu, Luyin, Navarro-Alarcon, David
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Deformable linear objects; Human–robot collaboration; Latent control model; Reactive manipulation
• ISSN: 0736-5845; 1879-2537
• DOI: 10.1016/j.rcim.2024.102727

Real-time reactive manipulation of deformable linear objects is a challenging task that requires robots to quickly and adaptively respond to changes in the object’s deformed shape that result from external forces. In this paper, a novel approach is proposed for real-time reactive deformable linear object manipulation in the context of human–robot collaboration. The proposed approach combines a topological latent representation and a fixed-time sliding mode controller to enable seamless interaction between humans and robots. The introduced topological control model offers a framework for controlling the dynamic shape of deformable objects. By leveraging the topological representation, our approach captures the connectivity and structure of the objects’ shapes within a latent space. This enables improved generalization and performance when handling complex deformable shapes. A fixed-time sliding mode controller ensures that the object is manipulated in real-time, while also ensuring that it remains accurate and stable during the manipulation process. To validate our proposed framework, we first conduct motor-robot experiments to simulate fixed human interaction processes, enabling straightforward comparisons with other approaches. We then follow up with human–robot experiments to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach. •A novel real-time human–robot collaboration framework for deformable object manipulation.•An efficient topology-aware latent encoding to support deformable object representation.•A latent space-based controller to support real-time human–robot collaboration for deformable object manipulation.•A detailed experimental validation of the proposed human–robot collaboration framework for deformable object manipulation.