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Tactile-based Control Strategies for Robotic Object Manipulation in Unstructured Environments

Introduction The ultimate goal of robotics is to bring robots into the real world, beyond controlled factories and laboratories. This is a challenge largely due to the many uncertainties present in uncontrolled environments. In the present study, we look at robotic grasping in such environments. Uncertainties in object position and orientation within the robot’s workspace must be controlled if objects are to be grasped and manipulated reliably. The best way to devise control strategies is to look to nature: how do animals and humans manipulate objects in the real world? Because the mammalian motor system is so complex, it is hard to give a single answer to this question. However, we can try to develop an understanding of its basic elements. For example, it has been shown that the main reason for dextrous manipulation abilities in humans is due to highlevel control structures embedded in the central nervous system [35], [36], [38]. In other studies of human physiology, it has been demonstrated that without tactile afferent signals, the motor system has much difficulty in completing basic object manipulation tasks [7], [24]. The main contribution of this work is to uncover a control strategy for a robotic manipulation system based on tactile feedback and other intrinsic measurements, combined with a high-level control structure based off of human physiological studies. The report is structured in six sections. Following this introduction, the related work section looks to the robotics literature and presents state of the art tactile-based grasping systems. In the next section, Background and Motivation, we present important neurological and physiological findings that can be useful in devising a robotic manipulation control strategy. In the Theory of Operations section, we present our experimental setup including the robotic equipment (i.e. the BarrettHand and WAM from Barrett Technology Inc.). This is followed by an introduction to the Experiments conducted as well as the Results obtained from these experiments. We finally Conclude with what we hope to achieve in future research. The text is accompanied by two documents containing the figures for (1) the Theory of Operations & Experiments sections as well as (2) the Results section.