Dr. Vineet Vashista, IIT Gandhinagar gave a talk on Human-Robot Collaboration – A Focus on System Design and Control on 10 January.
Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) is the study of interactions between humans and robots. In particular, the major focus is on understanding, designing, and evaluating robotic systems for use by or with humans. This problem was first highlighted by a 20th century novelist Isaac Asimov. In 1941, in his novel I, Robot, he stated the Three Laws of Robotics to determine the idea of safe interaction between robots and humans. The traditional approach to this problem has been the definition of safe zones for humans, such that the presence of humans is completely forbidden in the robot workspace while it is working.
With the advances in technology, such as computational capability, artificial intelligence, controllers, and system understanding, Dr. Vineet Vashista and his research group have come a long way since then to allow more natural and effective interaction between humans and robots. In his talk, Dr. Vashista highlighted the human-robot collaboration aspect of HRI. In particular, two different settings of interactions one with physical interaction, such as a leg exoskeleton, and the other with remote interaction, such as payload transportation by drones, are considered to study the role of system design and control in enabling improved human-robot collaboration.
Dr. Vineet Vashista received his Ph.D in Mechanical Engineering from Columbia University, New York (USA) in 2015 and Master of Technology in Mechanical Design from IIT Delhi in 2008. Dr. Vashista currently heads the Human-Centered Robotics Laboratory at IIT Gandhinagar. He was awarded the DST INSPIRE faculty award in 2016 and SERB Early Career Research Award in 2017. Dr. Vashista’s research interests are in the areas of cable-driven robots, rehabilitation robotics, human motor adaptation, and collaborative control of drones. The main focus of his research has been on the mechanical system design and control of robotic technologies that can be used for human performance augmentation and restoration.