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Towards Cooperative Control of Humanoid Robots for Handling High-Consequence Materials in Gloveboxes - 17291

Conference ·
OSTI ID:22802328
;  [1];  [2]
  1. Northeastern University (United States)
  2. University of Massachusetts Lowell (United States)
In this paper, we describe our ongoing work with NASA's Valkyrie humanoid robot and present preliminary results on cooperative control of Valkyrie's hands for performing dexterous manipulation tasks inside gloveboxes commonly found in many nuclear facilities. First, we discuss our human-supervised robot control framework which is based on optimization-based whole-body motion and manipulation controllers. A key aspect of this approach is perception based grasping. We develop a grasping control module for realizing the grasps corresponding to sample tasks such as power, ball, key, pinch, and open palm grasps and their variations. Next, we introduce the notion of motion template library in order to develop generalizable robot grasping and manipulation. Motion template library stores the constraint setting information for the constrained motion planning methods and a framework which can implement the motion template library on different types of robots for accomplishing similar tasks. Motion templates are defined only based on the task requirements. As a result, they can be easily ported to different robot platforms. Lastly, we discuss our multi-modal interfaces designs which include a visual display for improved situational awareness as well as a tactile glove for robot hand control and feedback. Our goal is for the person tele-operating the Valkyrie robot to have better sensing and control than what he or she would have if actually standing at the glovebox doing the work. This improved sensing is comprised of the ability to 'see through' the robot's arms and hands in the gloves and to have an improved sense of touch. The paper concludes with a discussion of our validation strategy. Our success metrics are derived from the completion of a relatively complex experiment to be performed in the glovebox. We evaluate various realistic experiments and use them for task validation and demonstration with Valkyrie. We use speed, time of completion, accuracy, repeatability and reliability rates as success metrics by designing replicable experiments. (authors)
Research Organization:
WM Symposia, Inc., PO Box 27646, 85285-7646 Tempe, AZ (United States)
OSTI ID:
22802328
Report Number(s):
INIS-US--19-WM-17291
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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