Shared Control of Multi-Robot Formations Based on the Eye-Hand Dual-modal Human-Robot Interface

The traditional multi-robot formation control system based on the single-modal human-robot interface with the haptic device has poor performance in complex motion control such as formation switching and partial obstacle avoidance. So a shared control method based on the dual-modal human-robot interface with the force feedback haptic device and the eye tracker is proposed. Firstly, the operator's hand input and the eye tracking signals are mapped to formation movement and formation switching commands respectively. Secondly, a shared control framework composed of the master teleoperation controller and the slave autonomous controller is designed. The master teleoperation controller is used to receive and issue operator's control commands and controls the formation movement and the formation switching, while the slave autonomous controller autonomously complete formation keeping, external obstacle avoidance and internal collision avoidance tasks according to the system status. Finally, the obstacle avoidance experiments, the formation switching experiments and the comparison experiments are designed to prove the feasibility of the control method. The experimental results show that compared with the traditional single-modal bilateral teleoperation control, the proposed method reduces the operating load, and increases the control efficiency by 17.42%.