Regulating contact forces with high precision is crucial for grasping and manipulating fragile or deformable objects. We aim to utilize the dexterity of human hands to regulate the contact forces for robotic hands and exploit human sensory-motor synergies in a wearable and non-invasive way. We extracted force information from the electric activities of skeletal muscles during their voluntary contractions through surface electromyography (sEMG). We built a regression model based on a Neural Network to predict the gripping force from the preprocessed sEMG signals and achieved high accuracy (R2 = 0.982). Based on the force command predicted from human muscles, we developed a force-guided control framework, where force control was realized via an admittance controller that tracked the predicted gripping force reference to grasp delicate and deformable objects. We demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed method on a set of representative fragile and deformable objects from daily life, all of which were successfully grasped without any damage or deformation.
This work describes a new human-in-the-loop (HitL) assistive grasping system for individuals with varying levels of physical capabilities. We investigated the feasibility of using four potential input devices with our assistive grasping system interface, using able-bodied individuals to define a set of quantitative metrics that could be used to assess an assistive grasping system. We then took these measurements and created a generalized benchmark for evaluating the effectiveness of any arbitrary input device into a HitL grasping system. The four input devices were a mouse, a speech recognitio…
A Precise Real-Time Force-Aware Grasping System for Robust Aerial Manipulation
State Key Laboratory of Industrial Control Technology, Zhejiang University（浙江大学工业控制技术状态重点实验室）；Huzhou Institute, Zhejiang University（浙江大学湖州研究院）；State Key Laboratory of Fluid Power and Mechatronic Systems, School of Mechanical Engineering, Zhejiang University（浙江大学流体动力与机械系统状态重点实验室）；Zhejiang Key Laboratory of Additive Manufacturing Technology and Equipment, School of Mechanical Engineering, Zhejiang University（浙江省增材制造技术与装备重点实验室）
Adaptive and Multi-object Grasping via Deformable Origami Modules
Singapore MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) centre（新加坡-麻省理工联合研究与技术中心）；Department of Mechanical Engineering, National University of Singapore（国立新加坡大学机械工程系）
TouchDrive: Electronics-Free Tactile Sensing Interface for Assistive Grasping
Division of Microsystems Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering（微系统技术部门）；Cyber-Physical Systems Lab, Department of Information Technology（网络物理系统实验室）
Learning Gentle Grasping Using Vision, Sound, and Touch
Learning, Adaptive Systems, and Robotics (LASR) Lab, TU Dresden（图腾德斯登技术大学学习、自适应系统与机器人实验室）；Center for Tactile Internet with Human-in-the-Loop (CeTI)（人机协同触觉互联网中心）
Everything-Grasping (EG) Gripper: A Universal Gripper with Synergistic Suction-Grasping Capabilities for Cross-Scale and Cross-State Manipulation
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley（加州大学伯克利分校机械工程系）；Department of Biomedical Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong（香港中文大学生物医学工程系）；Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong（香港中文大学机械与自动化工程系）；Multi-scale Medical Robotics Center, Hong Kong, China（香港医学机器人多尺度中心）；Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Purdue University（普渡大学农业与生物工程系）
Grasping Deformable Objects via Reinforcement Learning with Cross-Modal Attention to Visuo-Tactile Inputs
Dept. of Electronic Engineering at Sogang University（ソガン大学电子工程系）；Dept. of Immersive Media and Engineering at Sungkyunkwan University（顺天大学沉浸媒体与工程系）；College of Medicine, Yonsei University（延世大学医学院）
Beihang University（北京航空航天大学）；California NanoSystems Institute（加州纳米系统研究所）；University of California, Santa Barbara（加州大学圣巴巴拉分校）
A key challenge in robotics is to create efficient methods for grasping objects with diverse shapes, sizes, poses, and properties. Grasping with hand-like end effectors often requires careful selection of hand orientation and finger placement. Here, we present a soft, fingerless gripper capable of efficiently generating multiple grasping modes. It is based on a soft, cylindrical accordion structure containing coupled, parallel fluidic channels. It is controlled via pressure supplied from a single fluidic port. Inflation opens the gripper orifice for enveloping an object, while deflation allows…
Robust Adaptive Safe Robotic Grasping with Tactile Sensing
Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Institute, University of Southern Denmark（马士基麦金尼默勒研究所，丹麦南方大学）；Departments of Mechanical and Civil Engineering and Computing and Mathematical Sciences , California Institute of Technology（机械与土木工程系和计算与数学科学系，加州理工学院）
Agentic AI for Robot Control: Flexible but still Fragile
ETH Zurich（苏黎世联邦理工学院）；University of Cambridge（剑桥大学）；Technical University of Munich（慕尼黑技术大学）；Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems（智能系统马克斯·普朗克研究所）；German Aerospace Center (DLR)（德国航空航天中心（DLR））
Master Micro Residual Correction with Adaptive Tactile Fusion and Force-Mixed Control for Contact-Rich Manipulation
Shenzhen Ubiquitous Data Enabling Key Lab, Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen 518055, China（深圳智能数据赋能重点实验室，深圳国际研究生院，清华大学，深圳518055，中国）；School of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen 518107, China（电子与通信工程学院，中山大学，深圳518107，中国）；School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639956, Singapore（机械与航空航天工程学院，南洋理工大学，新加坡639956，新加坡）
Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering（保罗·G·艾伦计算机科学与工程学院）
Although general purpose robotic manipulators are becoming more capable at manipulating various objects, their ability to manipulate millimeter-scale objects are usually very limited. On the other hand, ultrasonic levitation devices have been shown to levitate a large range of small objects, from polystyrene balls to living organisms. By controlling the acoustic force fields, ultrasonic levitation devices can compensate for robot manipulator positioning uncertainty and control the grasping force exerted on the target object. The material agnostic nature of acoustic levitation devices and their…
Current anthropomorphic robotic hands mainly focus on improving their dexterity by devising new mechanical structures and actuation systems. However, most of them rely on a single structure/system (e.g., bone-only) and ignore the fact that the human hand is composed of multiple functional structures (e.g., skin, bones, muscles, and tendons). This not only increases the difficulty of the design process but also lowers the robustness and flexibility of the fabricated hand. Besides, other factors like customization, the time and cost for production, and the degree of resemblance between human han…
Autonomous Manipulation of Hazardous Chemicals and Delicate Objects in a Self-Driving Laboratory: A Sliding Mode Approach
Department of Electronic Systems, Aalborg University（电子系统系，奥尔堡大学）；Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, University of Naples（信息科技与电气工程系，那不勒斯大学）
University of California at Berkeley（加州大学伯克利分校）；Technische Universität Berlin（柏林工业大学）
Dexterous multi-fingered hands can accomplish fine manipulation behaviors that are infeasible with simple robotic grippers. However, sophisticated multi-fingered hands are often expensive and fragile. Low-cost soft hands offer an appealing alternative to more conventional devices, but present considerable challenges in sensing and actuation, making them difficult to apply to more complex manipulation tasks. In this paper, we describe an approach to learning from demonstration that can be used to train soft robotic hands to perform dexterous manipulation tasks. Our method uses object-centric de…
ALPHA-$α$ and Bi-ACT Are All You Need: Importance of Position and Force Information/Control for Imitation Learning of Unimanual and Bimanual Robotic Manipulation with Low-Cost System
Osaka University（大阪大学）；Graduate School of Information Science and Technology of Osaka University（大阪大学信息科学与技术研究生院）；School of Engineering Science, Osaka University（大阪大学工程科学学院）
