Port-Hamiltonian based control for human-robot team interaction

In this paper we consider the problem in which the human commands the overall behavior of a robot team while the robots are controlled to comply with formation constraints. Such human-robot team interaction is challenging in terms of system complexity and control synthesis. Port-Hamiltonian framework is suitable for modeling the interconnected systems. In this paper we model the robotic team, cooperatively manipulating an object, as a constrained port-Hamiltonian system. Furthermore, we propose a passivity-based control approach in the port-Hamiltonian framework for the cooperative manipulation system guided by the human. The control mechanism is based on the energy shaping for achieving a desired behavior of the formation and its preservation. An energy tank in the cascade is introduced to guarantee passivity of the system commanded by the human and safe interaction with humans in the robot environment. We validate the proposed approach with simulation and experiments.