Grasping and retrieving unknown hazardous objects with a mobile manipulator

Abstract

Robots show impressive flexibility and reliability in various applications. This makes them suitable to help and support humans in hazardous environments. They can handle dangerous, unknown objects with no risk for the operator’s health. In this work we present a shared operation approach for the identification and localization of unknown hazardous objects as well as a 3D mapping approach for mobile robots in challenging environments. A shared control force-based grasping approach complete these two components and makes it easy for a human operator to grasp and retrieve unknown hazardous objects. Including the human expertise in the operation and control is additionally supported by providing intuitive visualization on different levels of abstraction. The presented approach was successfully evaluated with two different mobile robots within a field test.