CCRI: Medium: Collaborative Research: Physical Robotic Manipulation Test Facility

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The robotics community has a rich history of research and development in grasping and manipulation. However, it has proven to be very difficult to make grasping work in the real world (e.g., homes and small-scale industry). Part of the problem is the limited amount of testing that can be done in a lab. Testing requires specialized hardware and a very large number of trials, which is difficult for a single researcher to do on their own. The goal of this project is to set up dedicated test centers for grasping and manipulation that can be used by anyone with an internet connection. The test centers will provide standardized benchmarks, software and tutorials to teach people the basics of grasping, and hardware to perform the actual testing. This infrastructure will make it easier for people to share and compare results, and make it easier for people to contribute without needing to buy (and maintain) a large amount of specialized hardware.There are four parts to this proposal; 1) Developing specialized hardware for testing and deploying in two facilities (one at Oregon State University, one at the University of Massachusetts Lowell) that have dedicated robotic arms and manipulators; 2) Software infrastructure to enable remote access for specifying tasks, running those tasks, then visualizing the results; 3) Implementing new and existing benchmark protocols (such as the ones developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)); and 4) Developing a community of users, including academic, industrial, and governmental institutions. The testbed approach should allow new and existing researchers a low cost method to participating in the grasping and manipulation scientific community and to provide standards from which the field can grow.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.