Physiology-based Stability Criterions for Human-Robot Interactions

An-ever growing class-of robots (haptic, rehabilitation, surgical) interact directly with the human arm and the coupled dynamics of this system is desired to be stable. Some theoretical results, based of robust linear stability theory, have been developed in order to design stable control schemes. However, it is argued herein that the basic assumptions of these theorems, such as passive impedance of the human arm, are not reliable, and a purely theoretic stability criterion is impractical. Instead, it is argued that focused studies of human arm impedance and physiology can help us design stable yet powerful systems adaptively and heuristically, by providing us with minimum performance requirements.