Collaborative Interaction and Control for Intelligent Human-robot Systems

Taking advantages of both human and robots, intelligent human-robot systems could achieve better performances in terms of safety and efficiency in cooperative tasks. The key technology of human-robot cooperation rests on two aspects: human-robot interaction (HRI) and cooperative control. Traditionally, intelligent human-robot systems often only consider HRI with single direction, which enables the robot understand human intention. Such HRI cannot provide authentic feedback to the human, which is critical for the human to learn the robot’s environment or intentions. In cooperative control of intelligent human-robot systems, cooperative control methods perform well in many goal-based cooperative tasks by using multi-modal sensory feedback information. On the other hand, for behavior-based cooperative tasks, such as walking assistance with exoskeleton robots etc, motor collaboration of the human and the robot need be considered.

The new generation of collaborative interaction and control technologies are expected to gain mutual understanding between human and the robot, and to realize motor collaboration in intelligent human-robot systems, especially for physical tightly-coupled human-robot systems, swarm human-robot systems etc. HRI of human-robot systems calls for the development of novel bi-directional HRI to enable mutual understanding between human and the robot. The bi-directional HRI could make human reaction towards the robot more reliable, smoothing the interaction process and making it more efficient. Furthermore, researchers could design motor collaborative control methods based on bi-directional HRI to improve the motor synergy of human and the robot in behavior-based cooperative tasks.

Therefore, we proposed this Research Topic to promote the fundamentals and technologies of collaborative interaction and control for intelligent human-robot systems. Topics of interests include but not limited to:
• Modelling of intelligent human-robot systems
• Multi-modal sensory integration for human intention recognition
• Bi-directional human-robot interfaces
• Multi-channel feedback system for understanding the intention of robots
• Learning-based cooperative control for intelligent human-robot systems
• Collaborative control for intelligent human-robot systems
• Applications of intelligent human-robot systems in rehabilitation, military operation, industry, etc.
Original research articles and reviews are welcomed.