Model predictive game control for personalized and targeted interactive assistance

Contact robots are increasingly used to assist humans in physical training and manufacturing tasks. However, the effectiveness of current systems is limited as their control focuses on the system performance without explicitly considering the upcoming human user’s control. Here we present a differential game-based controller for contact robots that ensures optimal interaction with the human user by predicting their control during movement while considering their inherently finite planning horizon. Using this model-predictive game (MPG) controller, we systematically investigated human-robot co-adaptation in experiments, demonstrating that: (a) interaction with MPG remains stable for all participants while effectively reducing human effort; (b) the robot adapts to human behavior, identifying and characterizing individual motor control strategies that remain consistent over time and may be used as control biomarkers; (c) the human adapts to the robot’s behavior, and their interaction behavior can be modulated through an assistance meta-parameter. These findings indicate that humans can understand and adapt to a partner’s control strategy during movement, thereby exhibiting behavior consistent with game theory principles. Furthermore, the ability of the assistance meta-parameter to guide human users toward specific interaction behaviors can be used to develop versatile robot-assisted learning systems for physical training and rehabilitation.