Modular Controllers, Strategies, and Modules for Robots in Contact Tasks

Human-level tasks involve a constant series of new motion strategies and associated controllers to achieve their tasks. This work explores ways in which strategies and controllers can be jointly developed in a way that is modular and flexible and that can yield highly dexterous manipulation. Such work has been used to help a heterogeneous team of robots (a compliant dual-armed humanoid robot and a rigid singled-arm industrial manipulator) work in tandem to perform reactive assemblies of truss structures using different coordination and cooperation approaches. It has also been used to enable single-arm and dual-armed snap assemblies of male and female cantilever snap parts.

Related work:

• A Vision-based Scheme for Kinematic Model Construction of Re-configurable Modular Robots
• Analysis of autonomous cooperative assembly using coordination schemes by heterogeneous robots using a control basis approach.
• Strategies, Controllers, and Coordination: Bi-Manual Snap Assembly
• A Constrain-Based Motion Control Strategy for Cantilever Snap Assembli