How do robots take two parts apart

This research is a natural progression of efforts which begun with the introduction of a new research paradigm in machine perception, called Active Perception. There it was stated that Active Perception is a problem of intelligent control strategies applied to data acquisition processes which will depend on the current state of the data interpretation, including recognition. The disassembly/assembly problem is treated as an Active Perception problem, and a method for autonomous disassembly based on this framework is presented

Impact of end effector technology on telemanipulation performance

Generic requirements for end effector design are briefly summarized as derived from generic functional and operational requirements. Included is a brief summary of terms and definitions related to end effector technology. The second part contains a brief overview of end effector technology work as JPL during the past ten years, with emphasis on the evolution of new mechanical, sensing and control capabilities of end effectors. The third and major part is devoted to the description of current end effector technology. The ongoing work addresses mechanical, sensing and control details with emphasis on mechanical ruggedness, increased resolution in sensing, and close electronic and control integration with overall telemanipulator control system

Design of Robot Gripper Mechanism for ROBOCON Robot Competition

The project is conducted by assumptions that are prototype built will consist of only lifter and gripper and cost for project research and prototype are neglected. Since there is no robot base and no movement of robot, the workpieces are feed into gripper jaw opening by external action. The outcome is development of an aluminum prototype model of a robot gripper

Design of a Versatile, Teleoperable, Towable Lifting Machine with Robotic Capabilities for Use in Nasa's Lunar Base Operations

The lifting machine will assist in lifting cargo off of landers sent to the Moon and in the construction of a lunar base. Three possible designs were considered for the overall configuration of the lifting machine: the variable angle crane, the tower crane, and the gantry crane. Alternate designs were developed for the major components of the lifting machine. A teleoperable, variable angle crane was chosen as its final design. The design consists of a telescoping boom mounted to a chassis that is supported by two conical wheels for towing and four outriggers for stability. Attached to the end of the boom is a seven degree of freedom robot arm for light, dexterous, lifting operations. A cable and hook suspends from the end of the boom for heavy, gross, lifting operations. Approximate structural sizes were determined for the lifter and its components. However, further analysis is needed to determine the optimum design dimensions. The design team also constructed a model of the design which demonstrates its features and operating principals

Parallel-Jaw Gripper and Grasp Co-Optimization for Sets of Planar Objects

We propose a framework for optimizing a planar parallel-jaw gripper for use with multiple objects. While optimizing general-purpose grippers and contact locations for grasps are both well studied, co-optimizing grasps and the gripper geometry to execute them receives less attention. As such, our framework synthesizes grippers optimized to stably grasp sets of polygonal objects. Given a fixed number of contacts and their assignments to object faces and gripper jaws, our framework optimizes contact locations along these faces, gripper pose for each grasp, and gripper shape. Our key insights are to pose shape and contact constraints in frames fixed to the gripper jaws, and to leverage the linearity of constraints in our grasp stability and gripper shape models via an augmented Lagrangian formulation. Together, these enable a tractable nonlinear program implementation. We apply our method to several examples. The first illustrative problem shows the discovery of a geometrically simple solution where possible. In another, space is constrained, forcing multiple objects to be contacted by the same features as each other. Finally a toolset-grasping example shows that our framework applies to complex, real-world objects. We provide a physical experiment of the toolset grasps.Comment: 2023 IEEE IROS conferenc

Ground Robotic Hand Applications for the Space Program study (GRASP)

This document reports on a NASA-STDP effort to address research interests of the NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC) through a study entitled, Ground Robotic-Hand Applications for the Space Program (GRASP). The primary objective of the GRASP study was to identify beneficial applications of specialized end-effectors and robotic hand devices for automating any ground operations which are performed at the Kennedy Space Center. Thus, operations for expendable vehicles, the Space Shuttle and its components, and all payloads were included in the study. Typical benefits of automating operations, or augmenting human operators performing physical tasks, include: reduced costs; enhanced safety and reliability; and reduced processing turnaround time

Design & Development of a Two-jaw parallel Pneumatic Gripper for Robotic Manipulation

The handling of abstract materials and mechanisms to pick and place are widely found in factory automation and industrial manufacturing. There are different mechanical grippers which are based on different motor technologies have been designed and employed in numerous applications. The designed robotic gripper in this paper is a two jaw actuated gripper which is different from the conventional cam and follower gripper in the way that controlled movement of the jaws is done with the help of pneumatic cylinders using air pressure. The force developed in the cylinder is very gentle and is directly delivered to the jaws in a compact way. The design, analysis and fabrication of the gripper model are explained in details along with the detailed list of all existing pneumatic grippers in market. The force and torque for the gripper have been calculated for different set of conditions. The working of the model is checked for and observation for pay load is recorded at various pressures. The highly dynamic and highly accelerated gripper model can be easily set at intermediate positions by regulating the pressure. Pneumatic grippers are very easy to handle and are generally cost-effective because air hoses, valves and other pneumatic devices are easy to maintain