Kinesthetic teaching and predictive control of interaction tasks in robotics

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Precise interactions as part of industrial manufacturing tasks are typically very complex to characterize and implement. One reason for this is the heterogeneity of the task-specific requirements for the motion and control behavior. A direct implementation of the task into a robot program therefore requires highly qualified specialists and is only profitable for large lot sizes. For a flexible applicability and easy (re-)configuration of the robot system, an approach to programming by kinesthetic demonstration is developed in this project. The robot is guided by the user through the entire manipulation task, while the robot motion as well as the interaction forces are simultaneously recorded. Typically, several repetitions of the demonstration are necessary in order to compensate for the suboptimality and imprecision of the human demonstration. This is particularly important for complex motion sequences or interaction situations, such as periodic movements or the assembly of components, that are difficult to demonstrate but at the same time are crucial for a successful task execution. The basis for this project is a previously developed general framework for model predictive interaction control (MPIC). The manipulation task is split into a sequence of elementary tasks, so-called manipulation primitives (MPs) with individual motion and control characteristics, which are treated in a holistic manner by a model predictive control approach. The MPIC approach is elaborated in this project regarding the kinesthetic demonstration of manipulation tasks, e.g. by considering the switching between MPs over the prediction horizon of the MPC. A further focus lies on the automatic generation of the MP sequence from the repeated demonstration of the manipulation task without requiring additional expert knowledge. Based on the demonstration, the manipulation task will be iteratively refined by learning the setpoints and the transition conditions of the MPs and finally by optimizing the overall manipulation task.