Towards a Shared Control Navigation Function: Efficiency Based Command Modulation

Abstract

This paper presents a novel shared control algorithm for robotized wheelchairs. The proposed algorithm is a new method to extend autonomous navigation techniques into the shared control domain. It reactively combines user’s and robot’s commands into a continuous function that approximates a classic Navigation Function (NF) by weighting input commands with NF constraints. Our approach overcomes the main drawbacks of NFs -calculus complexity and limitations on environment modeling- so it can be used in dynamic unstructured environments. It also benefits from NF properties: convergence to destination, smooth paths and safe navigation. Due to the user’s contribution to control, our function is not strictly a NF, so we call it a pseudo-navigation function (PNF) instead.