Li, C., Chen, Y., Wu, X., Teng, T., Calinon, S., Caldwell, D. and Chen, F. (2026)
Interactive Motion Planning for Human-Robot Collaboration Based on Human-Centric Configuration Space Ergonomic Field
IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics.
Abstract
Industrial human-robot collaboration requires motion planning that is collision-free, responsive, and ergonomically safe to reduce fatigue and musculoskeletal risk. We propose the Configuration Space Ergonomic Field (CSEF), a continuous and differentiable field over the human joint space that quantifies ergonomic quality and provides gradients for real-time ergonomics-aware planning. An efficient algorithm constructs CSEF from established metrics with joint-wise weighting and task conditioning, and we integrate it into a gradient-based planner compatible with impedance-controlled robots. In a 2-DoF benchmark, CSEF-based planning achieves higher success rates, lower ergonomic cost, and faster computation than a task-space ergonomic planner. Hardware experiments with a dual-arm robot in unimanual guidance, collaborative drilling, and bimanual cocarrying show faster ergonomic cost reduction, closer tracking to optimized joint targets, and lower muscle activation than a point-to-point baseline. CSEF-based planning method reduces average ergonomic scores by up to 10.31% for collaborative drilling tasks and 5.60% for bimanual co-carrying tasks while decreasing activation in key muscle groups, indicating practical benefits for real-world deployment.
Bibtex reference
@article{Li26TIE,
author={Li, C. and Chen, Y. and Wu, X. and Teng, T. and Calinon, S. and Caldwell, D. and Chen, F.},
title={Interactive Motion Planning for Human-Robot Collaboration Based on Human-Centric Configuration Space Ergonomic Field},
journal={IEEE Trans.\ on Industrial Electronics},
year={2026},
doi={10.1109/TIE.2026.3730155}
}