One important vision of robotics is to provide physical assistance by manipulating different everyday objects, e.g., hand tools, kitchen utensils. However, many objects designed for dexterous hand-control are not easily manipulable by a single robotic arm with a generic parallel gripper. Complementary to existing research on developing grippers and control algorithms, we present Roman, a suite of hardware design and software tool support for robotic engineers to create 3D printable mechanisms attached to everyday handheld objects, making them easier to be manipulated by conventional robotic arms. The Roman hardware comes with a versatile magnetic gripper that can snap on/off handheld objects and drive add-on mechanisms to perform tasks. Roman also provides software support to register and author control programs. To validate our approach, we designed and fabricated Roman mechanisms for 14 everyday objects/tasks presented within a design space and conducted expert interviews with robotic engineers indicating that Roman serves as a practical alternative for enabling robotic manipulation of everyday objects.
翻译:机器人的一个重要愿景是提供实际协助,操纵各种日常物体,例如手动工具、厨房用具等。然而,许多设计用于移动式手控的物体不易由一个带有通用平行牵控器的单一机器人臂操纵。作为对关于开发牵引器和控制算法的现有研究的补充,我们向机器人工程师介绍一套硬件设计和软件工具支持软件,以创建附属于日常手持物体的三维可打印装置,使其更容易被常规机器人武器操纵。罗马硬件配有一套能对开/关闭手持物体并驱动任务执行附加机制的多功能磁性控制器。罗马人还为登记和作者控制程序提供软件支持。为了验证我们的做法,我们设计了用于设计空间内14个日常物体/任务并制造了罗马机制,并与机器人工程师进行了专家访谈,表明罗马人是能够对日常物体进行机器人操纵的实用替代方法。