Dexterous Manipulation of Unknown Objects Using Virtual Contact Points

Abstract

The manipulation of unknown objects is a problem of special interest in robotics since it is not always possible to have exact models of the objects with which the robot interacts. This paper presents a simple strategy to manipulate unknown objects using a robotic hand equipped with tactile sensors. The hand configurations that allow the rotation of an unknown object are computed using only tactile and kinematic information, obtained during the manipulation process and reasoning about the desired and real positions of the fingertips during the manipulation. This is done taking into account that the desired positions of the fingertips are not physically reachable since they are located in the interior of the manipulated object and therefore they are virtual positions with associated virtual contact points. The proposed approach was satisfactorily validated using three fingers of an anthropomorphic robotic hand (Allegro Hand), with the original fingertips replaced by tactile sensors (WTS-FT). In the experimental validation, several everyday objects with different shapes were successfully manipulated, rotating them without the need of knowing their shape or any other physical property.

Analysis of the Impact of Human–Cobot Collaborative Manufacturing Implementation on the Occupational Health and Safety and the Quality Requirements

“…Moreover, the interaction with people is also the challenge for the research the system architecture for launching the action based on the instruction to perform the assigned task [ 37 ]. Unknown objects for the robot can also be a challenge for technological solutions [ 38 ]. Better results for navigating robots have been reported if a human worker is not tagged as an obstacle [ 9 ].…”

Learning-Based Planner for Unknown Object Dexterous Manipulation Using ANFIS

“…Several prior studies on this topic have been conducted [4][5][6][7]. Dexterous manipulation, is carried out basically in two ways, or combinations of them [8]:…”

“…Numerous recent works focus on the dexterous manipulation of unknown objects, where "unknown object" refers to an object whose shape and other properties are unknown when the manipulation begins [8]. The application of force optimization for the manipulation of unknown objects is presented in [14], and online improvement of the hand movements while manipulating an object is described in [15][16][17].…”

“…The application of force optimization for the manipulation of unknown objects is presented in [14], and online improvement of the hand movements while manipulating an object is described in [15][16][17]. The use of virtual contact points to solve the dexterous manipulation of unknown objects is presented in [8], and the teleoperated dexterous manipulation by an operator using an input interface, such as a keyboard, is carried out in [18], where the task is carried out by the hand following the directions of the operator.…”

Faster than Real-Time Surface Pose Estimation with Application to Autonomous Robotic Grasping

“…However, it is noticeable that a common key feature among most of the recent approaches is focusing solely on either a specific gripper solution or a specific grasping policy, which makes such approaches difficult to adapt to other standard grippers and generic environments [15][16][17]. An interesting technique for grasping novel objects using tactile sensors in the fingers is presented in [18].…”