The proposed work will contribute to the fundamental understanding of dexterous manipulation, especially in how low-dimensional hands that have traditionally been used for pure grasping tasks can be leveraged for excellent manipulation capabilities. The PI team will investigate how the passive mechanics of compliant and underactuated hands can be utilized for manipulation strategies include vibrational stick-slip, equilibrium point manipulation, and finger gaiting, as well as develop low-level planning and control schemes to implement those for a wide range of manipulation movements. This work will lead to the development of general-purpose robot hands having low-dimensional actuation and sensing. Furthermore, the focus on design for open-source dissemination through rapid prototyping techniques will result in novel fabrication strategies in furtherance of fast innovation in a range of fields.
A key thread of the proposed work is that simple hand designs and control schemes will be made freely available through an open-source repository. The hands will be able to be easily and inexpensively fabricated with rapid prototyping techniques, lower the entry barrier from expense hand hardware and encouraging continual design improvements. Additionally, the team will kick-start a user community around those hands through an on-site tutorial at Yale for approximately 20 students and postdocs from top manipulation research groups. For the education and outreach component of this proposal, a major thrust involves enhancing RoboticsCourseWare.org, the PI's open-access repository for robotics teaching materials, in order to highlight open-source and other inexpensive hardware platforms for educational purposes. A strong focus on involving a diverse group of undergraduates and high school students in the research plan is also highlighted.
