Design and Control of Foam Hands for Dexterous Manipulation

Bauer, Dominik; Bauer, Cornelia; King, Jonathan P.; Moro, Daniele; Chang, Kai-Hung; Coros, Stelian; Pollard, Nancy S.

doi:10.1142/s0219843619500336

Cited by 14 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 65 publications

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“…Additionally, George Thuruthel et al (2018) mention nonlinear material effects such as compliance, visco-elastic material behaviors, and hysteresis, as well as the wide range of design and actuation techniques that account for the non-trivial nature of this problem. Previous works have particularly studied the problem of inverse kinematics (IK) which is concerned with finding a mapping between actuator configuration and desired hand configuration (i.e., pose) (Rolf and Steil, 2013;George Thuruthel et al, 2016;Jiang et al, 2017;Schlagenhauf et al, 2018;Bauer et al, 2020). Existing control approaches can be classified into three main categories: model-based or model-free controllers, as well as combinations of both.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterizing Continuous Manipulation Families for Dexterous Soft Robot Hands

2021

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There has been an explosion of ideas in soft robotics over the past decade, resulting in unprecedented opportunities for end effector design. Soft robot hands offer benefits of low-cost, compliance, and customized design, with the promise of dexterity and robustness. The space of opportunities is vast and exciting. However, new tools are needed to understand the capabilities of such manipulators and to facilitate manipulation planning with soft manipulators that exhibit free-form deformations. To address this challenge, we introduce a sampling based approach to discover and model continuous families of manipulations for soft robot hands. We give an overview of the soft foam robots in production in our lab and describe novel algorithms developed to characterize manipulation families for such robots. Our approach consists of sampling a space of manipulation actions, constructing Gaussian Mixture Model representations covering successful regions, and refining the results to create continuous successful regions representing the manipulation family. The space of manipulation actions is very high dimensional; we consider models with and without dimensionality reduction and provide a rigorous approach to compare models across different dimensions by comparing coverage of an unbiased test dataset in the full dimensional parameter space. Results show that some dimensionality reduction is typically useful in populating the models, but without our technique, the amount of dimensionality reduction to use is difficult to predict ahead of time and can depend on the hand and task. The models we produce can be used to plan and carry out successful, robust manipulation actions and to compare competing robot hand designs.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterizing Continuous Manipulation Families for Dexterous Soft Robot Hands

2021

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“…Unlike rigid hands which feature finite degrees of freedom that can be characterized along well-defined kinematic chains, soft manipulators feature infinite degrees of freedom and a complex design space [30], [25]. This makes it inherently difficult for designers to predict how even small changes to design parameters such as tendon placement impacts the overall capabilities of the hand design [7], [10]. Consequently, design candidates must often be fabricated and tested in the real world or require specialized simulation for evaluation [14], [16], [28], [15].…”

Section: A Design and Modelingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In recent years many researchers have thus started to incorporate compliant mechanisms into their designs [26], [17], [31], and developed hands made entirely from soft materials [13], [7], [6]. In addition to the benefits associated with simpler control through underactuation and compliance, soft robots also promise to greatly reduce the number of parts needed in such a system by replacing intricate rigid body joint mechanics with simple compliant mechanisms [29].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards Very Low-Cost Iterative Prototyping for Fully Printable Dexterous Soft Robotic Hands

Bauer¹,

Bauer²,

Lakshmipathy³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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The design and fabrication of soft robot hands is still a time-consuming and difficult process. Advances in rapid prototyping have accelerated the fabrication process significantly while introducing new complexities into the design process. In this work, we present an approach that utilizes novel low-cost fabrication techniques in conjunction with design tools helping soft hand designers to systematically take advantage of multi-material 3D printing to create dexterous soft robotic hands. While very low cost and lightweight, we show that generated designs are highly durable, surprisingly strong, and capable of dexterous grasping.

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“…Soft materials have also been leveraged to improve the quality of interactions between the robot fingers and various objects. [7][8][9] This innovation, when applied at the joints, can notably boost the adaptive capacities of these robotic systems, 10,11 extending their operational flexibility.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design, kinematics, and prototyping of a gripping mechanism to adapt large space

Ji,

Wei,

Zhao

2023

Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part C:

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This manuscript introduces a symmetrical gripping mechanism, a significant piece of robotic equipment, adept at adjusting to the variable dimensions of disparate objects within an extensive range. The innovative mechanism presented in this treatise has dual degrees of freedom (DOF), and its parameters can be customized to satisfy diverse requirements. Symbolic computation is employed to dissect both the forward and inverse kinematics of the mechanism. Furthermore, the requisite driving force of the mechanism, when paired with parameterized objects, is discussed. Ultimately, a methodology is suggested for discerning the mechanism’s parameters in relation to variously grasped widths and forces. The article concludes with the introduction of a prototype construction process. Experimental results substantiate the effectiveness and functionality of the proposed mechanism.

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Design and Control of Foam Hands for Dexterous Manipulation

Cited by 14 publications

References 65 publications

Characterizing Continuous Manipulation Families for Dexterous Soft Robot Hands

Characterizing Continuous Manipulation Families for Dexterous Soft Robot Hands

Towards Very Low-Cost Iterative Prototyping for Fully Printable Dexterous Soft Robotic Hands

Design, kinematics, and prototyping of a gripping mechanism to adapt large space

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