Project DEMCO

In English

Research Project

Dexterous, mobile and cooperative grasping and manipulation (DEMCO )

TITLE: Dexterous, mobile and cooperative grasping and manipulation

Acronym: DEMCO

REFERENCE: DPI2013-40882-P

PERIOD: 1/1/2014- 31/12/2017

PROJECT LEADER: Raúl Suárez Feijóo

Email: raul.suarez@upc.edu
Phone: +34-934016548/6654

CENTER:Institut de Organització i Control de Sistemes Industrials (IOC)
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)

KEYWORDS: robotics, mechanical hands, dexterous manipulation, mobile manipulators, tactile information

Summary:
In recent years there have been significant advances in the area of object grasping and manipulating using robots, both from the point of view of developing new mechanical hands with anthropomorphic structure as in terms of algorithms to search for an efficient use of these hands. However, the actual implementation of these hands in tasks that require some skill is still quite limited and it is still common the use of grippers specially designed for a certain application, and even the use of very simple grippers with only two opposite fingers when looking for usefulness and robustness. One of the main causes of this limitation is the difficulty in determining the appropriate movements to perform a task in the presence of several uncertainty sources, a problem that can be tackled by making greater use of tactile information in all the phases of the grasping and manipulation tasks. On the other hand, mobile robotics has also advanced significantly, to the point of defining its own work field with many different applications, but when the mobile device is provided with a device for grasping and dexterous manipulation they generally work in uncoupled way, the mobile device is positioned according to certain criteria and then the grasping device acts as an static one. In this context, the overall objective of the project is to advance towards the elimination of these deficiencies. The robotics group of the IOC has extensive experience in the area of grasping and manipulation objects with robotic hands, planning and optimizing the movements of both the hand and the arm that supports it, and now it is intended to extend that experience in two directions. Basically, on one hand, deepening in the problems concerning the use of dexterous hands with many degrees of freedom when there exist different sources of uncertainty, for which there will be special emphasis on the use of tactile information, and, on the other hand, addressing the problem of determining efficient actions when the whole dexterous manipulation device is mounted on a mobile element. As a complementary topic it is also considered the cooperative action of more than one manipulator. Thus, the project aims to make contributions in the three typical levels of these systems: hand level, arm level and body level. As in previous projects of the group, the above problems are addressed with the intention to provide general solutions that are valid both in industrial and service robotics.