Reliable robotic handovers through tactile sensing

Abstract

Joint manipulation and object exchange are common in many everyday scenarios. Although they are trivial tasks for humans, they are still very challenging for robots. Existing approaches for robot-tohuman object handover assume that there is no fault during the transfer. However, unintentional perturbation forces can be occasionally applied to the object, resulting in the robot and the object being damaged, for example by being dropped. In this paper we present a novel approach to handover objects in a reliable manner while ensuring the safety of the robot and the object. Relying on tactile sensing, the system uses an effort controller to adapt the grasp forces in the presence of perturbations. Moreover, the proposed approach identifies a perturbation being applied on the object. When a perturbation event is detected, the algorithm classifies the direction of the pulling forces to decide whether to release it or not. The reliable handover system was implemented using a Shadow Robot hand equipped with BioTAC tactile sensors. Our results show that the system correctly adapts to the forces applied on the object to maintain the grasp and only releases the object if the human receiver pulls in the right direction.

Neuro-inspired electronic skin for robots

“…Peripheral Neural Pathway for Robots Robots require sensory-motor fusion and adaptive interaction with the environment. Specifically, skin-like tactile sensing has been used in robotics for tactile-based environmental exploration, physical human-robot interaction and collaboration, objects' physical properties recognition, tool manipulation and locomotion (18,146,147). However, most of these demonstrations are achieved by software approaches in a centralized computing unit, that is, the equivalent of brain.…”

Safe Local Aerial Manipulation for the Installation of Devices on Power Lines: AERIAL-CORE First Year Results and Designs

“…As occurs with other human-robot collaborative tasks [49,50], the close interaction of the aerial robot with the human operator must be safe, especially taking into account the risk due to the high altitude and the difficulty in standing upright in this kind of workspace. Since the proximity of the propellers to the worker will result in an uncomfortable feeling and a sense of danger [51], it is preferable that the handover operation [8,52] is carried out in such a way that the manipulator is separated from the aerial platform. Thus, the proposed solution consists of employing an aerial manipulator in long-reach [8,27] or cable-suspended configurations [14,15], using a cable (around 1.5 m in length) to attach the manipulator to the multirotor base.…”

A Review of Tactile Information: Perception and Action Through Touch

“…Recent new progress is focusing on inferring the humans latent state and intentions from sensory feedback [219]- [221]. For example, during a handover, the robot can employ vision and tactile feedback to determine when the human has a suitable grip and is ready to accept the object [194]. Similarly, when performing collaborative tasks such as carrying large objects, the robot measures interactive forces and torques through the force/torque sensor on the wrists for performing the task and react accordingly [195].…”