Human-Guided Autonomous Mobile Manipulator in Dynamic Environments

Human-robot interaction plays a pivotal role in the Industry 5.0 paradigm, where robots increasingly collaborate with human operators to augment their capabilities while alleviating them from burdensome and repetitive tasks and creating more efficient and safer work environments. In this context, this work focuses on the use of an autonomous mobile manipulator to assist a human operator in transporting items within a dynamic working environment. In the proposed framework, the manipulator's behavior is guided by human gestures during different phases of the task, while autonomous navigation, including payload transport and dynamic obstacle avoidance, is achieved through the integration of the robot's onboard sensing and actuation capabilities with an external camera network. The outlined control architecture is validated through a proof-of-concept implementation using the LoCoBot platform, demonstrating promising results.