Acquisition of Hand Information Using an Omni-directional Device

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a user interface for object manipulation with a multi-fingered robot hand. In order to achieve object manipulation, the user needs to tell the robot about task information such as desired contact points between the manipulated object and robotic fingers. Our teaching-by-showing system can measure the user's hand and its surroundings using an omni-directional camera and laser modules, while the camera which the user holds with several fingertips is regarded as a virtual object for object manipulation. The human hand is in contact with the cylindrical surface of the omni-directional camera so that our system can obtain the desired contact points for object manipulation by processing the camera image and using a support vector machine. The experimental results show the system can recognize which fingertip contacts the camera surface and can measure the contact positions of the fingertips.