Using intentional contact to achieve tasks in tight environments

Abstract

Skin technology enabled a powerful way to sense the environment in robotic systems. It allows simplifying the formulation of safety tasks such as collision avoidance between the robot, the environment and surrounding objects. In this paper, a hierarchy policy based on tactile feedback is proposed to let a robot interact with its environment while performing a set of tasks. Such policy lets the safety tasks as collision avoidance and physical interaction, be reduced to simple potential field rules fed directly with tactile feedback which keeps computation demand low. In this context, the concept of "Intentional Contact" is introduced to escape from classic undesired equilibrium points produced by local minima in the potential fields. Allowed contact with the environment empowers a robot to modify its surroundings in order to fulfil the main task. Such contact is permitted as long as the generated force remains under a specific limit, otherwise, a reactive action is taken to reduce it. This new concept is validated in simulation and on a real robot.

Safety Concerns Emerging from Robots Navigating in Crowded Pedestrian Areas

“…These types of intentional contacts may happen, for instance, when a robot is designed for direct physical interactions, which means that a human can control the robot motion by pushing or pulling on its body [62,66,67]. Another situation that could lead to intentional forms of contacts could be when a pedestrian decides to physically touch the robot while passing by as it happens in human to human interactions in crowded environments.…”

CHiMP: A Contact based Hilbert Map Planner

“…Existing state-of-the-art planning algorithms based on sampling [2], [3], or optimization [4], [5], have yet to be optimized for planning with robot skin. The concept of intentional contact was introduced with the work of Guadarrama et al [6], with a focus on control, similar to the work of Jain et al [7]. The goal of this work is to integrate a feasible planning-based approach with robot skin to enhance exploration and general planning behavior in unknown environments.…”