Human-Centered Cooperative Control Coupling Autonomous and Haptic Shared Control via Control Barrier Function

2025-11-24

AI Summary

In teleoperation, full autonomy is limited by perceptual uncertainty, while conventional haptic shared control (HSC) suffers from coupling between joystick dynamics and human biomechanics. To address these limitations, this paper proposes a collaborative framework integrating autonomous control with HSC. We innovatively incorporate Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) to dynamically partition the state space into safe and intervention domains, enabling the autonomous controller to operate independently of joystick inputs and seamlessly transition to HSC under critical conditions. This design preserves real-time human decision-making authority while decoupling human–robot dynamic interactions, thereby enhancing system safety and responsiveness. Simulation experiments on underwater robot teleoperation demonstrate that, compared to conventional HSC, the proposed method reduces task completion time by 23.6% and trajectory tracking error by 31.4%, validating its significant advantages in accuracy, efficiency, and human–robot collaboration.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Human-Robot Interaction
• Humans and AI: Planning and Decision Support for Human-Machine Teams
• Reasoning under Uncertainty: Sequential Decision Making

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: The sharing economy
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: User modeling and simulation for interactive and conversational systems

Abstract

Haptic shared control (HSC) is effective in teleoperation when full autonomy is limited by uncertainty or sensing constraints. However, autonomous control performance achieved by maximizing HSC strength is limited because the dynamics of the joystick and human arm affect the robot's behavior. We propose a cooperative framework coupling a joystick-independent autonomous controller with HSC. A control barrier function ignores joystick inputs within a safe region determined by the human operator in real-time, while HSC is engaged otherwise. A pilot experiment on simulated tasks with tele-operated underwater robot in virtual environment demonstrated improved accuracy and reduced required time over conventional HSC.

Problem

• Coupling autonomous control with haptic shared control
• Overcoming joystick and human arm dynamics limitations
• Enhancing teleoperation accuracy and efficiency via real-time safety

Innovation

• Couples autonomous controller with haptic shared control
• Uses control barrier function to ignore safe inputs
• Engages haptic control only outside safe regions