The importance of tactile sensing for physical human–robot interaction (pHRI) and dexterous manipulation is well known. SkinSim is a novel simulation environment for tactile robot skins in which one can study design tradeoffs involved in deploying whole-body, dense sensor arrays. In this article, scalable modeling approaches are presented for simulating pressure-sensitive robot skin patches, with simultaneous consideration of sensing element geometry and mechanical structure, signal quality, data processing, and closed-loop force controller performance. The open-source simulation architecture of SkinSim is compatible with Gazebo and robot operating system (ROS) programming environments and supports both robot skin dynamic models, as well as tactile sensing element models. An experimentally validated force dispersion model was introduced for the simulation of sensors embedded in a mechanical damping layer. Simulation examples of robot skin with different tactile resolutions are presented using parameter values extracted from an experimental testbed. Thus, simulation results were experimentally validated and the skin sensor density impact on a simple pHRI controller performance was evaluated. Performance measures include center of pressure (COP) estimation error and control signal settling time, overshoot, and steady-state errors. Results suggest that while COP errors decrease in denser sensor skins, controller performance also deteriorates. Therefore, optimal robot skin designs will have to consider application-dependent tradeoffs. Similar results were confirmed in simulation with a larger skin patch containing approximately 4000 tactels and deployed on the end-effector of a collaborative mobile manipulator.Note to Practitioners—This article was motivated by the expensive and time-consuming process of designing tactile skin for robots. When designing pressure-sensitive whole-body sensor arrays for physical human–robot interaction, there are tradeoffs related to sensor resolution, accuracy, and response time, among others. Instead of building prototypes and evaluating them experimentally, the SkinSim simulation environment allows automatic testing of skins with simultaneous consideration of sensing element geometry and mechanical structure, signal quality, data processing, and closed-loop force controller performance. The user can specify several configurations to test and thereby explore the best tradeoffs before actually prototyping any hardware.

With the rise of collaborative robots, the need for safe, reliable, and efficient physical human-robot interaction (pHRI) has grown. High-performance pHRI requires robust and stable controllers suitable for multiple degrees of freedom (DoF) and highly nonlinear robots. In this article, we describe a cascade-loop pHRI controller, which relies on human force and pose measurements and can adapt to varying robot dynamics online. It can also adapt to different users and simplifies the interaction by making the robot behave according to a prescribed dynamic model. In our controller formulation, two neural networks (NNs) in the “outer-loop” predict human motion intent and estimate a reference trajectory for the robot that the “inner-loop” controller follows. The inner-loop imposes a prescribed error dynamics (PED) with the help of a model-free neuroadaptive controller (NAC), which uses a NN to feedback linearize the robot dynamics. Lyapunov stability analysis gives weight tuning laws that guarantee that the error signals are bounded and the desired reference trajectory is achieved. Our control scheme was implemented on a Personal Robot 2 robot and validated through an exploratory experimental study in point-to-point collaborative motion. Results indicate fast convergence of our controller, and the resulting tracking error, motion jerk, and human control effort are comparable with other methods that require prior training, knowledge, and calibration.

This study investigates the effects of inertial sensor placement and noise characteristics on the accuracy of robot pose estimation. Of course, most robots are equipped with joint angle encoders for pose estimation and end-effector positioning. However, in some situations, it's not possible or not desirable to introduce encoders on all joints. Such common examples include legged locomotion, dual arm co-manipulation, and prosthetic limbs. To tackle such situations, one solution is to embed inertial measurement units (IMUs) into artificial skin patches placed on robots' limbs and body. This work analyzes the effects of design parameters such as the number of sensors, their placement on the robot, and noise properties on the quality of robot pose estimation and its signal-to-noise Ratio (SNR). We study the benefits of using a large number of IMUs, which is possible due to the proliferation of inexpensive micro-machined sensors. We use Monte-Carlo simulations and experiments with a two-link robot arm to obtain the distributions of expected estimation error metric values for several accelerometer configurations, which are then compared to determine the optimal number and placement for the IMUs. Results show that the placement of at least two accelerometers on each link has the most significant impact on the pose estimation error, while using a larger number of accelerometers plays a less significant role in reducing the arm pose estimation error and resultant SNR.