A learning-based framework for safe human-robot collaboration with multiple backup control barrier functions

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Authors
Janwani, Neil C.
Daş, Ersin
Touma, Thomas
Wei, Skylar X.
Molnar, Tamas G.
Burdick, Joel W.
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Issue Date
2024
Type
Conference paper
Keywords
Torque , Human-robot interaction , Switches , Control systems , Real-time systems , Safety , Task analysis
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Citation
N. C. Janwani, E. Daş, T. Touma, S. X. Wei, T. G. Molnar and J. W. Burdick, "A Learning-Based Framework for Safe Human-Robot Collaboration with Multiple Backup Control Barrier Functions," 2024 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Yokohama, Japan, 2024, pp. 11676-11682, doi: 10.1109/ICRA57147.2024.10611634.
Abstract

Ensuring robot safety in complex environments is a difficult task due to actuation limits, such as torque bounds. This paper presents a safety-critical control framework that leverages learning-based switching between multiple backup controllers to formally guarantee safety under bounded control inputs while satisfying driver intention. By leveraging backup controllers designed to uphold safety and input constraints, backup control barrier functions (BCBFs) construct implicitly defined control invariant sets via a feasible quadratic program (QP). However, BCBF performance largely depends on the design and conservativeness of the chosen backup controller, especially in our setting of human-driven vehicles in complex, e.g, off-road, conditions. While conservativeness can be reduced by using multiple backup controllers, determining when to switch is an open problem. Consequently, we develop a broadcast scheme that estimates driver intention and integrates BCBFs with multiple backup strategies for human-robot interaction. An LSTM classifier uses data inputs from the robot, human, and safety algorithms to continually choose a backup controller in real-time. We demonstrate our method's efficacy on a dualtrack robot in obstacle avoidance scenarios. Our framework guarantees robot safety while adhering to driver intention.

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Description
Date of Conference: 13-17 May 2024 Date Added to IEEE Xplore: 08 August 2024
Conference Location: Yokohama, Japan
Publisher
IEEE
Journal
2024 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)
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