Limited Information Longitudinal Shared Control of Large Vehicle-Manipulator

Abstract

This paper presents a longitudinal shared control approach for a large vehicle-manipulator, in which the vehicle platform is controlled by the automation while the manipulator is human-operated. The automation of such systems is challenging because reference trajectories and states of the manipulator are not fully measurable for the automation. To overcome this, the so-called limited information shared controller (LISC) is proposed in earlier works. The benefit of the LISC is that even if the manipulator's reference velocity is not measurable or observable, the automation can still support the operator in his/her tasks with the manipulator. In this paper, we apply the concept of LISC for the longitudinal guidance of the vehicle. Furthermore, a study is carried out on a real-time test bench, in which the test-subjects compared the proposed longitudinal guidance with a state-of-the-art solution. The results show that the proposed concept can help the operator to carry out his/her task faster and more efficiently.