This is the first year flitiding of a four-year continuing award. The goal of this research is to develop robot manipulation planners and controllers which exploit task mechanics. The effective use of friction, gravity, and dynamic forces can substitute for extra actuators, allowing the development of inexpensive, minimalist robots. The ideas will be applied to problems in (1) industrial parts feeding, where the manipulation planner will allow a simple two-joint robot which can push and roll parts to position and orient three-dimensional parts on a conveyor, and (2) motion planning for human-robot collaborative manipulation. A collaborative robot is a passive programmable constraint machine which sets up virtual guiding surfaces to assist a human in manipulation tasks. The problem is to find "ergonomically correct" guides --- of all the guides that lead the object to the goal configuration, which makes the task easiest for the human? It will be investigated in the context of repetitive tasks in auto assembly. This work toward accessible, minimalist robotics will be complemented by the development of two new courses. The first is a fresbman/sophomore-level mechatronics design course which will make use of the mechatronics design lab currently under development. This course and the lab will allow undergraduates to get involved in research and independent projects early in their careers. The second course is a senior/graduate-level course on mechanics and algorithms for robotic manipulation and industrial automation.
