Physical Human–Robot Interaction Using a Mobile Manipulator
(2025)Department of Automatic Control
- Abstract
- This thesis investigates human–robot co-manipulation in which a mobile manipulator assists a person in handling and maneuvering a jointly held object. A cooperative control strategy is developed that enables the robot to guide its motion by the human forces transmitted through a jointly held object. In this framework, the mobile base provides the primary movement while the manipulator maintains object stability and compliance, enabling an intuitive and non-technical interaction.
Both simulations and real-world experiments are conducted to design and validate the control approach on the Heron robot at RobotLab, LTH. The physical properties of the held object are identified experimentally, and the influence of noise in the measured... (More) - This thesis investigates human–robot co-manipulation in which a mobile manipulator assists a person in handling and maneuvering a jointly held object. A cooperative control strategy is developed that enables the robot to guide its motion by the human forces transmitted through a jointly held object. In this framework, the mobile base provides the primary movement while the manipulator maintains object stability and compliance, enabling an intuitive and non-technical interaction.
Both simulations and real-world experiments are conducted to design and validate the control approach on the Heron robot at RobotLab, LTH. The physical properties of the held object are identified experimentally, and the influence of noise in the measured interaction forces is characterized and mitigated. An extended Jacobian is formulated to integrate the nonholonomic base with the manipulator kinematics, and the implications of this coupling are systematically analyzed. The method builds on admittance control combined with null-space optimization, allowing simultaneous execution of secondary tasks such as obstacle and singularity avoidance.
The resulting system can co-transport the object while keeping it stable and comfortably positioned for the human partner, demonstrating a promising foundation for cooperative object handling in industrial environments. Proper tuning is required to prevent oscillations in the coupled control loop, introducing a trade-off between responsiveness and perceived inertia. The evaluation of different obstacle-avoidance strategies shows that the framework offers adaptable levels of autonomy that can be matched to the requirements of each task. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9222634
- author
- Furuhjelm, Johan and Larsson, Oliver
- supervisor
- organization
- year
- 2025
- type
- H3 - Professional qualifications (4 Years - )
- subject
- report number
- TFRT-6303
- other publication id
- 0280-5316
- language
- English
- id
- 9222634
- date added to LUP
- 2026-02-12 09:53:49
- date last changed
- 2026-02-12 09:53:49
@misc{9222634,
abstract = {{This thesis investigates human–robot co-manipulation in which a mobile manipulator assists a person in handling and maneuvering a jointly held object. A cooperative control strategy is developed that enables the robot to guide its motion by the human forces transmitted through a jointly held object. In this framework, the mobile base provides the primary movement while the manipulator maintains object stability and compliance, enabling an intuitive and non-technical interaction.
Both simulations and real-world experiments are conducted to design and validate the control approach on the Heron robot at RobotLab, LTH. The physical properties of the held object are identified experimentally, and the influence of noise in the measured interaction forces is characterized and mitigated. An extended Jacobian is formulated to integrate the nonholonomic base with the manipulator kinematics, and the implications of this coupling are systematically analyzed. The method builds on admittance control combined with null-space optimization, allowing simultaneous execution of secondary tasks such as obstacle and singularity avoidance.
The resulting system can co-transport the object while keeping it stable and comfortably positioned for the human partner, demonstrating a promising foundation for cooperative object handling in industrial environments. Proper tuning is required to prevent oscillations in the coupled control loop, introducing a trade-off between responsiveness and perceived inertia. The evaluation of different obstacle-avoidance strategies shows that the framework offers adaptable levels of autonomy that can be matched to the requirements of each task.}},
author = {{Furuhjelm, Johan and Larsson, Oliver}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Physical Human–Robot Interaction Using a Mobile Manipulator}},
year = {{2025}},
}