FREEpHRI targets human-robot interaction

Funded by an EPSRC Fellowship, ‘FREEpHRI: Flexible, Robust and Efficient Physical Human-Robot Interaction with iterative learning and self-triggered role adaption’ aims to allow robots to intelligently detect the changes of human behaviours and automatically adjust the human-robot relationship.

“In recent decades, robots have demonstrated their superiority in increasing productivity, efficiency and consistency in the manufacturing of products,” said principal investigator Dr. Zhenhong Li, a research fellow in Leeds’ School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering.

“Now, we aim to put humans back into the development and production process. By taking the advantage of robots’ precision and humans’ creativity, we may create a better system that can provide individualised products and services.”

The fellowship will focus on the development of a human-robot interaction control strategy which enables robots to flexibly respond to their human partners, Li told The Engineer, for intended applications across industries such as manufacturing and healthcare.

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“Leveraging the latest development of optimisation theory and machine learning algorithms, we are going to investigate three fundamental issues in physical human-robot interaction,” Li said.