Negotiating the Steering Control Authority within Haptic Shared Control Framework

This paper presents an adaptive haptic shared control framework wherein a human driver and an automation system are physically connected through a motorized steering wheel. By haptic feedback, the driver and automation system can monitor each other actions and can still intuitively express their control intentions. The focus of this project is to develop a systematic model for an automation system that can vary its impedance such that its interaction with a human partner occurs as smoothly as that same interaction would between two humans. To this end, we define four types of conflicts between the human and the automation system. A cost function is then defined to ensures the safety of the collaborative task but also takes account for the assistive behavior of the automation system. We employed a predictive controller based on modified non-negative least square to modulate the automation system impedance such that the cost function is optimized. The results demonstrate that the impedance modulation mechanism should be different for different types of conflicts.