Upper-Limb Geometric MyoPassivity Map for Physical Human-Robot Interaction

The intrinsic biomechanical characteristic of the human upper limb plays a central role in absorbing the inter- active energy during physical human-robot interaction (pHRI). We have recently shown that based on the concept of “Excess of Passivity (EoP),” from nonlinear control theory, it is possible to decode such energetic behavior for both upper and lower limbs [1], [2]. The extracted knowledge can be used in the design of controllers (such as [2]–[5]) for optimizing the transparency and fidelity of force fields in human-robot interaction and in haptic systems. In this paper, for the first time, we investigate the frequency behavior of the passivity map for the upper limb when the muscle co-activation was controlled in real- time through visual electromyographic feedback. Five healthy subjects (age: 27±5) were included in this study. The energetic behavior was evaluated at two stimulation frequencies at eight interaction directions over two controlled muscle co-activation levels. Electromyography (EMG) was captured using the Delsys Wireless Trigno system. Results showed a correlation between EMG and EoP, which was further amplified by decreasing the frequency. The proposed energetic behavior is named the Geometric MyoPassivity (GMP) map. The findings indicate that the GMP map has the potential to be used in real-time to quantify the absorbable energy, thus passivity margin of stability for upper limb interaction during pHRI.