Kwan Suk Kim

Kwan Suk Kim, Luis Sentis

Intentional or unintentional contacts are bound to occur increasingly more often due to the deployment of autonomous systems in human environments. In this paper, we devise methods to computationally predict imminent collisions between objects, robots and people, and use an upper-body humanoid robot to block them if they are likely to happen. We employ statistical methods for effective collision prediction followed by sensor-based trajectory generation and real-time control to attempt to stop the likely collisions using the most favorable part of the blocking robot. We thoroughly investigate collisions in various types of experimental setups involving objects, robots, and people. Overall, the main contribution of this paper is to devise sensor-based prediction, trajectory generation and control processes for highly articulated robots to prevent collisions against people, and conduct numerous experiments to validate this approach.

Kwan Suk Kim

In this context, a major focus of this thesis is on unintentional collisions, where a straight goal is to eliminate injury from users and passerby's via realtime sensing and control systems. A less obvious focus is to combine collision response with tools from motion planning in order to produce intelligent safety behaviors that ensure the safety of multiple people or objects. Yet, an even more challenging problem is to anticipate future collisions between objects external to the robot and have the robot intervene to prevent imminent accidents. In this dissertation, we study all of these sophisticated flavors of collision reaction and intervention. We investigate in-depth multiple key and interesting topics related to collisions and safety of mobile robots and robotic manipulators operating in human environments. Overall we deeply investigate collisions from many perspectives and develop techniques that borrow and contribute to the areas of mechatronic design, sensor processing, feedback controls, motion planning, and probabilistic reasoning methods. The result of this study is a set of key experiments and guidelines to deal with collisions in mobile robots and robotic manipulators. This study aims at influencing future studies on field operations of robots and accelerate the employment of advanced robots in our daily environments without compromising our safety.