Object Handover with Toyota Human Support Robot (HSR)

This project will focus on examining and enabling human-robot joint actions for the Human Support Robot (HSR) from Toyota (https://mag.toyota.co.uk/toyota-human-support-robot/), hosted at the Independent Living Laboratory at the National Robotarium.

As robots become more common and useful not only in industry but also in the home, they will need to interact with humans to complete many varied tasks. Human-robot joint actions or collaborative physical tasks, such as passing an object to each other (handover), require coordination from both agents in order to reach a joint goal. The previous student (best project 2018/19, and “best paper award” in the 1st IEEE International Conference on Human-Machine Systems in 2020 [1]) developed a handover behaviour for the robot TIAGO from PAL Robotics, and carried out a pilot user study.

The new student will implement an handover behaviour for the HSR, and create a demonstration to study everyday interactive tasks with higher coordination demands (e.g., handing over an object while avoiding obstacles or negotiating space in domestic environments etc.). The project is open to be customised to the interests of the students, including, for instance, programming the robot to recognise and grasp different objects, using relevant existing software frameworks.

References:
[1] Cooper, Sara, et al., An EEG investigation on planning human-robot handover tasks., 2020 IEEE International Conference on Human-Machine Systems (ICHMS). IEEE, 2020.

Required Skills: Good programming skills (Python, Robotic Operating System).