Adaptive Shared Control with Human Intention Estimation for Human Agent Collaboration

In this paper an adaptive shared control framework for human agent collaboration is introduced. In this framework the agent predicts the human intention with a confidence factor that also serves as the control blending parameter, that is used to combine the human and agent control commands to drive a robot or a manipulator. While performing a given task, the blending parameter is dynamically updated as the result of the interplay between human and agent control. In a scenario where additional trajectories need to be taught to the agent, either new human demonstrations can be generated and given to the learning system, or alternatively the aforementioned shared control system can be used to generate new demonstrations. The simulation study conducted in this study shows that the latter approach is more beneficial. The latter approach creates improved collaboration between the human and the agent, by decreasing the human effort and increasing the compatibility of the human and agent control commands.