Japan (STA) Postdoctoral Program: Hardware Implementation of Redundant Manipulator Inverse Kinematic Simulations

该奖项将为Kevin Cleary博士提供补充支持，使他能够与日本筑波机械工程实验室的Tatsuo Arai博士进行为期六个月的合作研究。他们将探索在机器人操作器的运动规划系统中纳入多个次要标准的潜力。常见的工业机械臂有6个自由度。增加额外的自由度将潜在地扩展这些机械手的能力，使它们能够在布满障碍物的环境中工作，避免奇点，并且更加灵活。Cleary已经开发了一种算法，将这些算法整合到多个次要性能标准中，并通过计算机模拟将这些算法应用到七自由度机器人系统中。新井博士和他在机械工程实验室的同事们已经制造了一个具有七自由度的直接驱动机械手，并将其应用于缝纫系统。通过将理论和硬件结合在一起，这种合作应该产生对冗余机械手实际实现的见解。

This award will provide supplementary support to enable Dr. Kevin Cleary, presently of the University of Texas, Austin, to conduct collaborative research for six months with Dr. Tatsuo Arai of the Mechanical Engineering Laboratory in Tsukuba, Japan. They will explore the potential for incorporating multiple secondary criteria in a motion planning system for robot manipulators. Common industrial manipulators have six degrees of freedom (DOF). Adding additional DOF will potentially extend the capabilities of these manipulators to enable them to perform in obstacle strewn environments, avoid singularities, and be more dextrous. Cleary has developed algorithms for incorporating such multiple secondary performance criteria and has applied these to a seven DOF robot system via computer simulation. Dr. Arai and his colleaques at the Mechanical Engineering Lab have built a direct drive manipulator with seven DOF and applied it to a sewing system. By bringing theory and hardware together, this collaboration should yield insights into the practical implementation of redundant manipulators.