UWB-Based Adaptable Side-by-Side Following for Human-Following Robots

Abstract

Compared with a mobile robot follows behind the target person, side-by-side following is a more common, relaxed, and friendly human-robot interaction (HRI). However, when the target person suddenly turns, a side-by-side following robot struggles to achieve an adaptable adjustment of the position and posture. To address this problem, a recursive least square parameter adaptation algorithm (RLS-PAA) is proposed to achieve an adaptable side-by-side following using an Ultra-Wideband (UWB) system. To evaluate the motion control performance of side-by-side following, the proposed RLS-P AA is tested on the MATLAB simulation and a mobile robot platform. When the safe distance is set as 0.500 meters, experimental results show that the distance between the target person and the robot beyond 0.430 meters for a circle trajectory and 0.482 meters for a square trajectory, respectively.