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Foundations of Robotics Seminar, September 20, 2011
Time
and Place | Seminar Abstract
Sensitive Manipulation
Eduardo Torres-Jara
Computer Science Department
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
NSH 1507
Talk 4:30 pm
This talk presents an alternative approach to robotic manipulation. In this approach, manipulation is mainly guided by tactile feedback as opposed to vision. The motivation behind this approach stems from the fact that manipulating an object necessarily implies coming into contact with it. As a result, directly sensing physical contact seems more important than vision to control the interaction of the object and the robot. In this work, the traditional approach of a highly precise arm guided by a vision system is replaced by one that uses a low mechanical impedance arm with dense tactile sensing and exploration capabilities.
The robots OBRERO and GoBot have been built to implement this approach. We have developed a novel tactile sensing technology and mounted our sensors on the robots' hands. These sensors are biologically inspired and present adequate features for manipulation. The success of this approach is shown by picking up objects in a poorly modeled environment. This task, simple for humans, has been a challenge for robots. The robot can deal with new, unmodeled objects. Specifically, OBRERO can gently contact, explore, lift, and place an object in a different location. It can also detect basic slippage and external forces acting on an object while it is held. These tasks can be performed successfully with very light objects, without fixtures, and on slippery surfaces. Similarly, GoBot is capable of manipulating small objects such as the stones in the game GO. Both OBRERO and GoBot perform all of their manipulations using tactile feedback.
Eduardo Torres-Jara is currently an Assistant Professor in the Robotics Engineering program at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). Before joining WPI, he was a Post-Doctoral Associate at the Humanoid Robotics and Distributed Robotics groups at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab., and the Harvard Microrobotics Lab. Dr. Torres-Jara holds a PhD and SM degrees from MIT and an Ingeniero degree from Escuela Politenica del Ejercito, Ecuador. Before attending MIT, Dr. Torres-Jara co-founded three startups in his native country Ecuador in the areas of software, telecommunications, and electronic hardware.
The Robotics Institute is part of the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University.