Variable compliance and geometry regulation of Soft-Bubble grippers with active pressure control
Toyota Research Institute (TRI)（丰田研究所（TRI））
Sihah Joonhigh, Naveen Kuppuswamy, Andrew Beaulieu, Alex Alspach, Russ Tedrake
备注：
Research done at Toyota Research Institute. The first three authors contributed equally. Accepted to the 4th IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft 2021), IEEE copyright. The supplemental video is available publicly at https://youtu.be/1ywIaWuwTbI
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, controlled changes in gripper finger geometry and grasp stiffness, as well as simple in-hand manipulation. We also demonstrate, despite these changes, the continued viability of advanced perception capabilities such as dense geometry and shear force measurement - we present a straightforward extension of our previously presented approach for measuring shear induced displacements using the internal imaging sensor and taking into account pressure and geometry changes. We quantify the controlled variation of grasp-free geometry, grasp stiffness and contact patch geometry resulting from pressure regulation and we demonstrate new capabilities for the gripper in the home by grasping in constrained spaces, manipulating tools requiring lower and higher stiffness grasps, as well as contact patch modulation.
Southern University of Science and Technology（南方科技大学）
Soft grippers are receiving growing attention due to their compliance-based interactive safety and dexterity. Hybrid gripper (soft actuators enhanced by rigid constraints) is a new trend in soft gripper design. With right structural components actuated by soft actuators, they could achieve excellent grasping adaptability and payload, while also being easy to model and control with conventional kinematics. However, existing works were mostly focused on achieving superior payload and perception with simple planar workspaces, resulting in far less dexterity compared with conventional grippers. In…
ARTiS: An Adaptive Robotic Gripper for Enhanced Tool Manipulation in Disassembly Applications
National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST)（日本国立先进工业科学技术研究所（AIST））；The University of Osaka（大阪大学）；Graduate School of Engineering Science, The University of Osaka（大阪大学工程科学研究生院）
National University of Singapore（新加坡国立大学）；Nanyang Technological University（南洋理工大学）
Grasping is an essential capability for most robots in practical applications. Soft robotic grippers are considered as a critical part of robotic grasping and have attracted considerable attention in terms of the advantages of the high compliance and robustness to variance in object geometry; however, they are still limited by the corresponding sensing capabilities and actuation mechanisms. We propose a novel soft gripper that looks like a granary with a compliant snap-through bistable mechanism fabricated by integrated mold technology, achieving sensing and actuation purely mechanically. In p…
Robotics and Biology Laboratory, Technische Universität Berlin（柏林工业大学机器人与生物学实验室）
This paper evaluates state-of-the-art contact models at predicting the motions and forces involved in simple in-hand robotic manipulations. In particular it focuses on three primitive actions --linear sliding, pivoting, and rolling-- that involve contacts between a gripper, a rigid object, and their environment. The evaluation is done through thousands of controlled experiments designed to capture the motion of object and gripper, and all contact forces and torques at 250Hz. We demonstrate that a contact modeling approach based on Coulomb's friction law and maximum energy principle is effectiv…
Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic)（阿米尔卡比尔理工大学（德黑兰理工学院））
Soft grippers, for stable grasping of objects, with high compliance could be considered a suitable candidate for replacement of conventional rigid grippers, and in recent years, they have been emerging exponentially in industries. Not only are these highly adaptable grippers capable of static grasping of an object, but also they can be utilized for performing object manipulation tasks. Plenty of contemporary studies have been emphasizing on static grasping ability of soft grippers. However, in this thesis, planar in-hand object manipulation in a soft gripper which comprises a pair of soft fing…
Georgia Institute of Technology（佐治亚理工学院）；Intel Labs（英特尔研究院）；Meta Reality Labs（Meta现实实验室）；Hello Robot Inc.（Hello Robot公司）
Soft robotic grippers facilitate contact-rich manipulation, including robust grasping of varied objects. Yet the beneficial compliance of a soft gripper also results in significant deformation that can make precision manipulation challenging. We present visual pressure estimation & control (VPEC), a method that infers pressure applied by a soft gripper using an RGB image from an external camera. We provide results for visual pressure inference when a pneumatic gripper and a tendon-actuated gripper make contact with a flat surface. We also show that VPEC enables precision manipulation via close…
In unstructured urban canals, regulation-aware interactions with other vessels are essential for collision avoidance and social compliance. In this paper, we propose a regulations aware motion planning framework for Autonomous Surface Vessels (ASVs) that accounts for dynamic and static obstacles. Our method builds upon local model predictive contouring control (LMPCC) to generate motion plans satisfying kino-dynamic and collision constraints in real-time while including regulation awareness. To incorporate regulations in the planning stage, we propose a cost function encouraging compliance wit…
Global berry production and consumption have significantly increased in recent years, coinciding with increased consumer awareness of the health-promoting benefits of berries. Among them, fresh market blackberries and raspberries are primarily harvested by hand to maintain post-harvest quality. However, fresh market berry harvesting is an arduous, costly endeavor that accounts for up to 50% of the worker hours. Additionally, the inconsistent forces applied during hand-harvesting can result in an 85% loss of marketable berries due to red drupelet reversion (RDR). Herein, we present a novel, ten…
TU Berlin（柏林工业大学）；Fraunhofer IPK（弗劳恩霍夫生产系统与设计技术研究所）
Fine assembly tasks such as electrical connector insertion have tight tolerances and sensitive components, limiting the speed and robustness of robot assembly, even when using vision, tactile, or force sensors. Connector insertion is a common industrial task, requiring horizontal alignment errors to be compensated with minimal force, then sufficient force to be brought in the insertion direction. The ability to handle a variety of objects, achieve high-speeds, and handle a wide range in object position variation are also desired. Soft grippers can allow the gripping of parts with variation in …
BaRiFlex: A Robotic Gripper with Versatility and Collision Robustness for Robot Learning
Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin（机械工程系，德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校）；Department of Computer Science, The University of Texas at Austin（计算机科学系，德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校）
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）
Hybrid Rigid-Soft Robotic Gripper with Shape Adaptation, Uniform Force Distribution, and Self-Locking Capabilities
Intelligent Equipment Research Center, Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences（北京市农林科学院智能装备研究中心）；College of Engineering, China Agricultural University（中国农业大学工学院）；College of Engineering, Shanxi Agricultural University（山西农业大学工学院）
Hybrid Robotic Meta-gripper for Tomato Harvesting: Analysis of Auxetic Structures with Lattice Orientation Variations
Tohoku University, Japan（东京东京大学）；Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), the Netherlands（代尔夫特理工大学）；Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur), India（印度理工学院坎浦尔分校）
Robotics and Biology Laboratory, Technische Universität Berlin（技术大学柏林机器人与生物学实验室）；Science of Intelligence, Research Cluster of Excellence, Berlin（柏林智能科学卓越研究中心）；Robotics Institute Germany（德国机器人研究所）
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）
The synthesis of tactile sensing with compliance is essential to many fields, from agricultural usages like fruit picking, to sustainability practices such as sorting recycling, to the creation of safe home-care robots for the elderly to age with dignity. From tactile sensing, we can discern material properties, recognize textures, and determine softness, while with compliance, we are able to securely and safely interact with the objects and the environment around us. These two abilities can culminate into a useful soft robotic gripper, such as the original GelSight Fin Ray, which is able to g…
To adapt to constantly changing environments and be safe for human interaction, robots should have compliant and soft characteristics as well as the ability to sense the world around them. Even so, the incorporation of tactile sensing into a soft compliant robot, like the Fin Ray finger, is difficult due to its deformable structure. Not only does the frame need to be modified to allow room for a vision sensor, which enables intricate tactile sensing, the robot must also retain its original mechanically compliant properties. However, adding high-resolution tactile sensors to soft fingers is dif…
OMRON SINIC X Corp.（欧姆龙SINIC X公司）；OMRON Corp.（欧姆龙公司）；Osaka University（大阪大学）；SenseTime Japan Ltd.（商汤日本有限公司）；National Inst. of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST)（国立先进工业科学技术研究所（AIST））；Laboro.AI Inc.（Laboro.AI公司）
We propose a versatile robotic system for kitting and assembly tasks which uses no jigs or commercial tool changers. Instead of specialized end effectors, it uses its two-finger grippers to grasp and hold tools to perform subtasks such as screwing and suctioning. A third gripper is used as a precision picking and centering tool, and uses in-built passive compliance to compensate for small position errors and uncertainty. A novel grasp point detection for bin picking is described for the kitting task, using a single depth map. Using the proposed system we competed in the Assembly Challenge of t…
Compared to traditional rigid robotics, soft robotics has attracted increasing attention due to its advantages as compliance, safety, and low cost. As an essential part of soft robotics, the soft robotic gripper also shows its superior while grasping the objects with irregular shapes. Recent research has been conducted to improve its grasping performance by adjusting the variable effective length (VEL). However, the VEL achieved by multi-chamber design or tunable stiffness shape memory material requires complex pneumatic circuit design or a time-consuming phase-changing process. This work prop…
Manipulider: A Multi-Engine Buoyancy-Controlled Robot for Thrusterless Underwater Gliding and Manipulation
Dept. of Computer Science, Dartmouth College（达特茅斯学院计算机科学系）；Dept. of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Houston（休斯顿大学机械与航空航天工程系）；Dept. of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering, Virginia Tech（弗吉尼亚理工大学航空航天与海洋工程系）；Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Clemson University（克莱姆森大学电气与计算机工程系）
Kinetostatics and Particle-Swarm Optimization of Vehicle-Mounted Underactuated Metamorphic Loading Manipulators
Institute for Robotics Research（机器人研究所）；Centre for Robotics Research（机器人研究中心）；Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR)（新加坡制造技术研究所，科技研究局（A*STAR））
Manipulation and grasping with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) currently require accurate positioning and are often executed at reduced speed to ensure successful grasps. This is due to the fact that typical UAVs can only accommodate rigid manipulators with few degrees of freedom, which limits their capability to compensate for disturbances caused by the vehicle positioning errors. Moreover, UAVs have to minimize external contact forces in order to maintain stability. Biological systems, on the other hand, exploit softness to overcome similar limitations, and leverage compliance to enable aggr…
