Physical Human-Robot Interaction: Mutual Learning and Adaptation

Close physical interaction between robots and humans is a particularly challenging aspect of robot development. For successful interaction and cooperation, the robot must have the ability to adapt its behavior to the human counterpart. Based on our earlier work, we present and evaluate a computationally efficient machine learning algorithm that is well suited for such close-contact interaction scenarios. We show that this algorithm helps to improve the quality of the interaction between a robot and a human caregiver. To this end, we present two human-in-the-loop learning scenarios that are inspired by human parenting behavior, namely, an assisted standing-up task and an assisted walking task.