Shared Control With Obstacle Avoidance for UGVs

Uncrewed ground vehicle (UGV) applications, such as warehouse operations, assembly-line production, infrastructure inspection, surveillance, precision farming, and search & rescue, can benefit from shared control, in which a human can semi-automatically control the UGV when needed and let it operate fully-automatically, when desired. Many algorithms have been developed to permit a UGV to semi-autonomously conduct tasks, either individually, or in a group. However, a complete semi-autonomous system that works wherever, and whenever, needed is far from being implemented. Here, we develop a human-robot shared controller for the supervisory control of one or more UGVs by a single person. The shared controller blends an automatic control input with a human control input. The automatic control input consists of a trajectory tracking controller and a control barrier function based input term for collision avoidance. A joystick is used to provide the human control input. Human intent is measured employing a Lyapunov-like storage function, which is used in a convex function based blending law that continuously varies the magnitude of the control inputs coming from the human and the machine. The approach permits us to theoretically prove the asymptotic stability of the closed-loop system. The shared controller is validated using both a physical robot in a cluttered indoor environment, and a hardware-in-the-loop simulated robot operating in virtual warehouse environment.