A human‐robot collaboration method for uncertain surface scanning

Abstract

Abstract Robots are increasingly expected to replace humans in many repetitive and high‐precision tasks, of which surface scanning is a typical example. However, it is usually difficult for a robot to independently deal with a surface scanning task with uncertainties in, for example the irregular surface shapes and surface properties. Moreover, it usually requires surface modelling with additional sensors, which might be time‐consuming and costly. A human‐robot collaboration‐based approach that allows a human user and a robot to assist each other in scanning uncertain surfaces with uniform properties, such as scanning human skin in ultrasound examination is proposed. In this approach, teleoperation is used to obtain the operator's intent while allowing the operator to operate remotely. After external force perception and friction estimation, the orientation of the robot end‐effector can be autonomously adjusted to keep as perpendicular to the surface as possible. Force control enables the robotic manipulator to maintain a constant contact force with the surface. And hybrid force/motion control ensures that force, position, and pose can be regulated without interfering with each other while reducing the operator's workload. The proposed method is validated using the Elite robot to perform a mock B‐ultrasound scanning experiment.