A Soft Human-Interactive Robot RI-MAN

Odashima, Tadashi; Onishi, Masaki; Tahara, Kenji; Takagi, Kentaro; Asano, Fumihiko; Kato, Yutaka; Nakashima, Hiroatsu; Kobayashi, Yuichi; Mukai, Toshiharu; Zhang, Luo; Hosoe, Shigeyuki

doi:10.1109/iros.2006.282203

Cited by 33 publications

(13 citation statements)

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“…Tactile sensors on the remote robot's arms will measure contact force locations and intensities [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]. The tactile display system will then reproduce this distributed force information along the operator's arm.…”

Section: System Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Most important is the integration of the tactile display with tactile sensors on the remote robot's arms. Large-area sensors are under development and some have been commercialized [16][17][18][19][20][21][22], and many humanoid robots have been developed which incorporate tactile skin sensors [23][24][25][26]. How to best transform the sensor signals into appropriate drive signals for the display will require analysis of the sensor mechanical properties and signal encoding, as well as better understanding of the perceptual and motor control issues [29].…”

Section: Future Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A whole-arm tactile display system

Tadakuma

Howe

2009

World Haptics 2009 - Third Joint EuroHaptics Conference and Symposium on Haptic Interfaces for Virtual Environment and Teleoper

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This work presents a new tactile display device for relaying contact information to locations along the human arm. The system is intended to facilitate teleoperation of whole-arm manipulation tasks, such remotely controlling a humanoid robot to grasp and lift large objects. The system consists of a set of five tactors, each a foam-covered paddle 42 x 48 mm. These tactors are brought into contact with the skin of the user's arm by small DC motors under computer control. The tactors are mounted on frames which are readily mounted to the upper and lower arm using Velcro straps. User tests demonstrate that the system can effectively convey contact information to the user. The benefits of this haptic display modality are evaluated in comparison with degraded visual information to estimate the resolution limits of the system. KEYWORDS:tactile display, whole-arm manipulation, teleoperation. INTRODUCTIONTeleoperation is, at present, the most effective method for performing robotic manipulation tasks in unstructured environments. Telemanipulation is typically performed using the robot arm's end effecter, but whole-arm manipulation can extend manipulation capabilities by using all surfaces of the arm to interact with objects in the remote environment [1][2][3]. This has particular promise for tasks that involve interactions between the remote robot and the human body, such as rescue operations in hazardous environments, care of the elderly and infirm, and space exploration. In general, whole-arm telemanipulation can expand the range of robotic interaction to objects that are on the same scale as the entire robot arm; for teleoperated humanoid robots with two arms, this can extend to the scale of the entire humanoid body. A challenge in whole-arm telemanipulation is conveying the mechanical interaction in the remote environment to the operator. For example, in attempting to grasp a large object by enveloping it with the robot arm, it is important to detect the location and magnitude of the contact forces along all arm segments. This contact information helps to determine the stability of the grasp and the ability to lift the object and carry out manipulation tasks [4][5]. Sensing contact locations using vision in whole-arm manipulation is problematic due to occlusions, and the need for force information.Previous work towards conveying contact interactions in teleoperation has largely focused on force feedback techniques for reproducing force vectors from remote interactions at fixed locations on the hand or fingers (e.g. [6][7][8][9]). For conveying distributed pressure or shape information across the skin, attention has focused on fingertip-scale devices (e.g. [10][11]). Across larger regions of the body, a number of systems have been demonstrated using vibrotactile stimulators [12][13] or electrotactile displays to convey spatially distributed stimuli [7], [14]. None of these systems are capable of reproducing variations in force intensity across the arm's surface.In this paper we present a prototype lightweight,...

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Section: System Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Future Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

A whole-arm tactile display system

Tadakuma

Howe

2009

World Haptics 2009 - Third Joint EuroHaptics Conference and Symposium on Haptic Interfaces for Virtual Environment and Teleoper

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“…Recall 12 that (after choosing bases, which is shown later in Section 5.5.1) in spaces X ,V,U, every linear map a : X → U, c : X → V and f : V → U can be represented as a m × n matrix A, a k × n matrix C and a m × k matrix F , respectively. Hence, the full-rank decomposition of map a is represented by a full-rank factorization 13 of matrix A, given by: A =: F C. Then it is used that for the given matrix A, there always exists a singular value decomposition, such that A can be written as:…”

Section: Is Non-surjective and Injective)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For disabled and elderly people (our aging society demands for labor free solutions), they will assist in their primary needs, see e.g. RI-MAN [13].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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On compliant underactuated robotic fingers

Wassink¹

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SummaryDriven by societal trends, such as aging, and by a desire to drive economic growth and enhance commercial competitiveness, researchers have tried to move robots from structured manufacturing tasks to unstructured professional and personal service applications.As announced in the Falcon project, an example of a possible unstructured professional service task for future robots is found in package-handling tasks in warehouses (distribution centers). The Falcon project aimed to design a new system architecture for a fully automated distribution center and to define, within this architecture, specific critical robotic components, which were then targeted to be researched. The author observed some inherent challenges in following such an application driven research approach. Chapter 2 presents the author's reflections on the tensions between top-down systems engineering approaches and the classical bottom-up approach for doing research.Rather than targeting one specific robotic service application, several general technological challenges were identified that require resolution to let robots move from structured to unstructured applications. One such general technological challenge is to develop versatile robotic end-effectors which are able to execute a diverse set of unstructured human-like service tasks, either being professional or personal tasks. Various approaches can be taken to develop these versatile end-effectors. This thesis focuses on contributing in the development of human-like dexterous robotic hands. The thesis presents a study on a novel robotic finger concept (aimed to be used in dexterous robotic hands), the control thereof and an accompanying theoretic treaty on natural pseudo-inverses.Inspired by human hand studies, Chapter 3 describes the desired functions for a dexterous robotic hand, being dexterous grasping, dexterous manipulation, free motion and interactive motion. Following a brief review of the current status of dexterous robotic hand technology, Chapter 3 formulates design considerations and a research direction for further developments and innovations in dexterous robotic hand technology. Variable mechanical compliance and underactuated actuation methods are marked as important design features to support robust, reliable, low weight, human dimensional and affordable technologies for dexterous robotic hands. Benefits of using actuation methods with variable compliance for grasping are presented separately in Chapter 4. Several simple grasp scenarios are used to show that different scenarios have different preferred compliance settings, which highlights the advantages of using variable compliance.Chapter 5 gives insights on natural space decompositions for the pseudo-inverse of physical maps in models of physical systems, such as the actuation Jacobian (also called transmission matrix) in a kinematic model of a drive-train of an underactuated robotic finger. Multiple mathematical view-points are used to explain the importance of choosing proper metrics on vector spaces, especially w...

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