Human-Like Dexterous Manipulation using Compliant Actuations

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Robots have become an integral part of modern industrial automation and it is hard to imagine an automated plan without a robot. Yet, the application of robots is limited to a very narrow scope of well-defined and pre-planned tasks. In fact, when it comes to manipulating ordinary objects, robots fall short of the expectations. In contrast, humans have exceptional ability to manipulate objects. They acquire this ability through a long process of adaptation; 2 years to grasp things, 5 years to use a spoon, and 10 years to use a toothbrush. This process allows humans to coordinate the movements of the arm and the hand as one unit. In addition, human’s motor-control system is extremely forgiving allowing to alter the stiffness of the hand (the reaction forces to external disturbances) swiftly to match a task’s requirements. The long term vision of this research is to develop new and innovative solutions for object manipulation to enable robots perform tasks with human-like dexterity. This vision is enabled through a series of short-term efforts to address various aspects of object manipulation. The first short-term goal is to develop a general framework for unified control of the robot arm and the robot hand (grasp problem) as a combined optimization problem. Unlike humans, in robotics, these two problems are traditionally treated as two separate problems with sub-optimal and often unfeasible solutions. The second short-term goal is to exploit compliant actuations (a new class of actuators that couples to a load using a non-rigid element) to provide robots with similar capabilities as human muscle actuations for modulating stiffness. The modulation of the actuator compliance with minimal sensing needs and computation time enables a robot to have similar performance as a biological hand while providing the strength and durability required in industrial applications. The third short-term goal focuses on further enhancing the state of the art in compliant actuation using new forms of “smart” materials and new control approaches.