This research will form a theory of robotic cutting and manipulation of soft and irregularly shaped objects. Applications of the results are leading to more skillful dexterous robots geared for a range of industrial applications, improving safety risks, and increasing reliability and consistency.

The technical goal of this project is to understand in depth about manipulation of delicate, flexible, and slippery items, handling of tools with skills, coordination among robotic arms and hands, and motion planning and control based on multi-modality sensing and deformable modeling. The project consists of two phases. The first phase develops strategies for basic maneuvers of cutting devices, tackling issues that include vision-guided hand placements, large deformable modeling in real time, pickup and stabilization, and dexterous grasping and re-grasping. The second phase investigates coordination of two robotic arm-hand pairs to carry out cutting, and synthesizes trajectories and controls to implement different cutting skills. Technical issues to address in this phase include material viscoelasticity, contact detection, cut planning and execution on the fly, arm and hand trajectory planning, and fusion of visual and force data.

Project Start
Project End
Budget Start
2016-10-01
Budget End
2020-02-29
Support Year
Fiscal Year
2016
Total Cost
$308,828
Indirect Cost
Name
Iowa State University
Department
Type
DUNS #
City
Ames
State
IA
Country
United States
Zip Code
50011