A population randomization-based multi-objective genetic algorithm for gesture adaptation in human-robot interaction

In recent years, vision-based gesture adaptation has attracted great attention from many experts in the field of human-robot interaction, and many methods have been proposed and successfully applied, such as particle swarm optimization and genetic algorithm. However, the reduction of the error and energy consumption of a robot while paying attention to more subtle attitude changes is very important and challenging. In view of these problems, we propose a population randomization-based multi-objective genetic algorithm. The gesture signal is processed with a slight change by imitating the biological evolution mechanisms. In the proposed algorithm, a random out-of-order matrix is added in the process of population evolution synthesis to prevent the premature grouping convergence of the new population. The weights of the objective function and the elite retention strategy are adopted, and the most adaptable individuals in each generation are inherited directly in the next generation without any recombination or mutation. To verify the effectiveness of the algorithm, preliminary application experiments are performed on the gesture adaptation of a robotic arm. The results are compared with the original signal, and the comparison shows that by using the proposed method, the energy consumption is reduced, and the end error is decreased to less than 3 mm while ensuring the tracking effect of the robotic arm. These obtained results meet the communication requirements for human-robot interactions such as handshakes. Moreover, the proposed method has better performance, uses less energy, and has a smaller tracking error than the particle swarm optimization, the single-objective genetic algorithm, and the traditional multi-objective genetic algorithm. A preliminary application experiment indicates that the robotic arm can adapt to human gestures in real time.