Inverse Optimal Control for the identification of human objective: a preparatory study for physical Human-Robot Interaction

Nowadays, many applications involving humans and robots working together require physical interaction. It is known that, during an interaction, the mutual understanding and knowledge of the partner’s goal improves and allows natural interaction. For this purpose, this work proposes Inverse Optimal Control (IOC) to recover the cost function of a human performing a reaching task with a robot in passive impedance control. This work presents the potentialities and limitations of the presented IOC method to describe human objectives. This work represents a preparatory study toward smooth and natural physical Human-Robot Interaction (pHRI), intending to understand the basic information on humans’ behavior.