  As robotic technology advances, the barriers to the coexistence of humans and
robots are slowly coming down. Application domains like elderly care,
collaborative manufacturing, collaborative manipulation, etc., are considered
the need of the hour, and progress in robotics holds the potential to address
many societal challenges. The future socio-technical systems constitute of
blended workforce with a symbiotic relationship between human and robot
partners working collaboratively. This thesis attempts to address some of the
research challenges in enabling human-robot collaboration. In particular, the
challenge of a holistic perception of a human partner to continuously
communicate his intentions and needs in real-time to a robot partner is crucial
for the successful realization of a collaborative task. Towards that end, we
present a holistic human perception framework for real-time monitoring of
whole-body human motion and dynamics. On the other hand, the challenge of
leveraging assistance from a human partner will lead to improved human-robot
collaboration. In this direction, we attempt at methodically defining what
constitutes assistance from a human partner and propose partner-aware robot
control strategies to endow robots with the capacity to meaningfully engage in
a collaborative task.

Robotics;Systems and Control;Systems and Control