Although autonomous control of robotic manipulators has been studied for several decades, they are not commonly used in safety-critical applications due to lack of safety and performance guarantees - many of them concerning the modulation of interaction forces. This paper presents a mechanical probing strategy for estimating the environmental impedance parameters of compliant environments, independent a manipulator's controller design, and configuration. The parameter estimates are used in a position-based adaptive force controller to enable control of interaction forces in compliant, stationary, and non-stationary environments. This approach is targeted for applications where the workspace is constrained and non-stationary, and where force control is critical to task success. These applications include surgical tasks involving manipulation of compliant, delicate, moving tissues. Results show fast parameter estimation and successful force modulation that compensates for motion.
Admittance-Based Motion Planning with Vision-Guided Initialization for Robotic Manipulators in Self-Driving Laboratories
Department of Electronics Systems, Aalborg University（电子系统系，奥尔堡大学）；Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II（信息科技与电气工程系，那不勒斯费迪里奇二世大学）
Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology（弗劳恩霍夫生产系统与设计技术研究所）
Force control enables hands-on teaching and physical collaboration, with the potential to improve ergonomics and flexibility of automation. Established methods for the design of compliance, impedance control, and \rev{collision response} can achieve free-space stability and acceptable peak contact force on lightweight, lower payload robots. Scaling collaboration to higher payloads can allow new applications, but introduces challenges due to the more significant payload dynamics and the use of higher-payload industrial robots. To achieve high-payload manual guidance with contact, this paper pro…
Control of Powered Ankle-Foot Prostheses on Compliant Terrain: A Quantitative Approach to Stability Enhancement
Mechanical Engineering Department, at the University of Delaware（德克萨斯大学达勒姆分校机械工程系）；Mechanical Engineering Department, at the Rice University（赖斯大学机械工程系）
Residual Compliant Policy: Learning Compliant Policies from Few Demonstrations
University of Pennsylvania（宾夕法尼亚大学）；Technical University of Darmstadt（达姆施塔特工业大学）；Karlsruhe Institute of Technology（卡尔斯鲁厄理工学院）；German Research Center for AI (DFKI)（德国人工智能研究中心）；Robotics Institute Germany (RIG)（德国机器人研究所）
PRISMA Lab, department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology of the University of Naples Federico II（PRISMA实验室，那不勒斯费德里科二世大学电气工程与信息科技系）；Inria, CNRS, Université de Lorraine（Inria、CNRS、洛林大学）；ABB Corporate Research Center（ABB企业研究中心）
Collaborative robots should ideally use low torque actuators for passive safety reasons. However, some applications require these collaborative robots to reach deep into confined spaces while assisting a human operator in physically demanding tasks. In this paper, we consider the use of in-situ collaborative robots (ISCRs) that balance the conflicting demands of passive safety dictating low torque actuation and the need to reach into deep confined spaces. We consider the judicious use of bracing as a possible solution to these conflicting demands and present a modeling framework that takes int…
University of Wollongong（伍伦贡大学）；University of Wollongong in Dubai（迪拜伍伦贡大学）
This paper expounds the design and control of a new Variable Stiffness Series Elastic Actuator (VSSEA). It is established by employing a modular mechanical design approach that allows us to effectively optimise the stiffness modulation characteristics and power density of the actuator. The proposed VSSEA possesses the following features: i) no limitation in the work-range of output link, ii) a wide range of stiffness modulation (~20Nm/rad to ~1KNm/rad), iii) low-energy-cost stiffness modulation at equilibrium and non-equilibrium positions, iv) compact design and high torque density (~36Nm/kg),…
While compliant grippers have become increasingly commonplace in robot manipulation, finding the right stiffness and geometry for grasping the widest variety of objects remains a key challenge. Adjusting both stiffness and gripper geometry on the fly may provide the versatility needed to manipulate the large range of objects found in domestic environments. We present a system for actively controlling the geometry (inflation level) and compliance of Soft-bubble grippers - air filled, highly compliant parallel gripper fingers incorporating visuotactile sensing. The proposed system enables large,…
CATCH-FORM-3D: Compliance-Aware Tactile Control and Hybrid Deformation Regulation for 3D Viscoelastic Object Manipulation
School of Automation Science and Engineering, South China University of Technology（华南理工大学自动化科学与工程学院）；Institute for Super Robotics (Huangpu)（（黄埔）超级机器人研究所）
Force modulation of robotic manipulators has been extensively studied for several decades but is not yet commonly used in safety-critical applications due to a lack of accurate interaction contact modeling and weak performance guarantees - a large proportion of them concerning the modulation of interaction forces. This study presents a high-level framework for simultaneous trajectory optimization and force control of the interaction between manipulator and soft environments. Sliding friction and normal contact force are taken into account. The dynamics of the soft contact model and the manipul…
Carnegie Mellon University（卡内基梅隆大学）；Intrinsic（Intrinsic（谷歌旗下机器人公司））；Arizona State University（亚利桑那州立大学）
In this paper, we discuss a framework for teaching bimanual manipulation tasks by imitation. To this end, we present a system and algorithms for learning compliant and contact-rich robot behavior from human demonstrations. The presented system combines insights from admittance control and machine learning to extract control policies that can (a) recover from and adapt to a variety of disturbances in time and space, while also (b) effectively leveraging physical contact with the environment. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach using a real-world insertion task involving multiple si…
CATCH-FORM-ACTer: Compliance-Aware Tactile Control and Hybrid Deformation Regulation-Based Action Transformer for Viscoelastic Object Manipulation
School of Automation Science and Engineering, South China University of Technology（华南理工大学自动化科学与工程学院）；Institute for Super Robotics (Huangpu)（黄埔智能机器人研究院）
Design and Control of Modular Soft-Rigid Hybrid Manipulators with Self-Contact
Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, MIT（麻省理工学院计算机科学与人工智能实验室）；Delft University of Technology（代尔夫特理工大学）；German Aerospace Center (DLR)（德国航空航天中心）
Context-Aware Force Estimation for Deformable Tool Manipulation in Robotic Environmental Swabbing via Few-Shot Continual Adaptation
Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, University of Arkansas（阿肯色大学，生物与农业工程系）；Department of Food Science, University of Arkansas（阿肯色大学，食品科学系）
