A Unified Multimodal Interface for the RELAX High-Payload Collaborative Robot.

This manuscript introduces a mobile cobot equipped with a custom-designed high payload arm called RELAX combined with a novel unified multimodal interface that facilitates Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) tasks requiring high-level interaction forces on a real-world scale. The proposed multimodal framework is capable of combining physical interaction, Ultra Wide-Band (UWB) radio sensing, a Graphical User Interface (GUI), verbal control, and gesture interfaces, combining the benefits of all these different modalities and allowing humans to accurately and efficiently command the RELAX mobile cobot and collaborate with it. The effectiveness of the multimodal interface is evaluated in scenarios where the operator guides RELAX to reach designated locations in the environment while avoiding obstacles and performing high-payload transportation tasks, again in a collaborative fashion.

Autonomous Obstacle Crossing Strategies for the Hybrid Wheeled-Legged Robot Centauro.

The development of autonomous legged/wheeled robots with the ability to navigate and execute tasks in unstructured environments is a well-known research challenge. In this work we introduce a methodology that permits a hybrid legged/wheeled platform to realize terrain traversing functionalities that are adaptable, extendable and can be autonomously selected and regulated based on the geometry of the perceived ground and associated obstacles. The proposed methodology makes use of a set of terrain traversing primitive behaviors that are used to perform driving, stepping on, down and over and can be adapted, based on the ground and obstacle geometry and dimensions.