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Experiments of fine manipulation tasks with dexterous robotic hands

  • Soft Mechatronics
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Abstract

In this paper, the experimental evaluation of fine manipulation tasks executed by the DEXMART Hand is presented. The robotic hand is characterized by a compliant actuation system and soft contact interfaces. The manipulation is controlled by feedback information acquired by optoelectronic tactile sensors integrated into the fingertips of the robotic hand. An impedance-like control scheme has been implemented to allow the simultaneous control of the finger positions and contact forces, thus preventing position drift caused by asymmetric force measurement between different sensors. This approach allows also to decouple the control of the normal force applied to the object to prevent slip from the control of the tangential forces applied to the object surface to perform manipulation. Moreover, the evaluation of manipulation tasks of soft objects with variable weight is presented to show the ability of the system to hold the object by applying the minimum required normal force to prevent slip. The performance evaluation has been carried out by considering fine manipulation tasks executed with a simplified setup composed by two opposed fingers, and manipulation tasks of various objects involving the whole DEXMART Hand are presented, as a demonstration of the device capabilities.

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Notes

  1. EU Patent No. 0001400420.

  2. http://www-lar.deis.unibo.it/people/gpalli/files/ Experiments of Fine Manipulation Tasks with Dexterous Robotic Hands.mp4.

Abbreviations

\(\dot{q}\) :

Joint angular velocity vector

\(\dot{q}_d\) :

Joint angular velocity vector

\(\hat{f}_d\) :

Minimum-norm tendon force vector

\(\lambda \) :

Tendon null-space force scaling factor

\(\mu \) :

Surface friction coefficient

\(\varPhi ^{-1}(p)\) :

Finger inverse kinematic function

\(\tau \) :

Joint torque vector

\(\tau _d\) :

Desired joint torque vector

\(a_i\) :

Finger link lengths

\(e_0\) :

Contact point free-space motion (before contact)

\(e_c\) :

Contact point displacement due to the object deformation

\(e_f\) :

Joint position deviation caused by the contact force

F :

Reaction force due to the object deformation

f :

Tendon force vector

\(f_0\) :

Tendon threshold force vector

\(F_d\) :

Desired contact force

\(f_d\) :

Desired tendon force vector

\(f_k\) :

Tendon null-space force vector

\(F_m\) :

Measured contact force

\(F_{d_z}\) :

Normal desired contact force

\(F_{m_t}\) :

Measured tangential contact force

\(F_{m{\{x,y,z\}}}\) :

Measured contact force along \(\{x,y,x\}\) axis

g(q):

Gravity torque vector

H :

Tendon-joint coupling matrix

J :

Finger Jacobian matrix

\(K_D\) :

Joint velocity control gain matrix

\(K_P\) :

Joint position control gain matrix

\(K_T\) :

Contact force controller gain matrix

\(K_{\{1,2\}}\) :

Object elastic constants

l :

Tendon displacement vector

\(l_{i}\) :

Tendon displacements

\(p(q)=\varPhi (q)\) :

Cartesian fingertip position wrt \({\mathcal {F}}_b\)

\(p_{\{x,y,z\}}\) :

Fingertip position along \(\{x,y,z\}\) axis

q :

Finger joint angle vector

\(q_i\) :

Finger joint angles

R(q):

Rotation matrix between \({\mathcal {F}}_f\) and \({\mathcal {F}}_b\)

\(R_c^s(T)\) :

Rotation matrix between contact frame and the tactile sensor frame

\(R_s(q)\) :

Rotation matrix between the tactile sensor frame and \({\mathcal {F}}_b\)

\(r_{ij}\) :

Radii of the finger joint pulleys

T(q):

Coordinate transformation between \({\mathcal {F}}_f\) and \({\mathcal {F}}_b\)

v :

Manipulation controller auxiliary input

\({\mathcal {F}}_b\) :

Finger base reference frame

\({\mathcal {F}}_f\) :

Fingertip reference frame

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. DEI - Università di Bologna, Viale Risorgimento 2, 40136, Bologna, Italy

    G. Palli & C. Melchiorri

  2. DIII - Seconda Università di Napoli, Via Roma 29, Aversa, Italy

    S. Pirozzi, C. Natale & G. De Maria

Authors
  1. G. Palli
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  2. S. Pirozzi
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  3. C. Natale
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  4. G. De Maria
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  5. C. Melchiorri
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Correspondence to G. Palli.

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Palli, G., Pirozzi, S., Natale, C. et al. Experiments of fine manipulation tasks with dexterous robotic hands. Meccanica 50, 2767–2780 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11012-015-0217-x

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