An Optimization Approach to Teleoperation of the Thumb of a Humanoid Robot Hand: Kinematic Mapping and Calibration

The complex kinematic structure of a human thumb makes it difficult to capture and control the thumb motions. A further complication is that mapping the fingertip position alone leads to inadequate grasping postures for current robotic hands, many of which are equipped with tactile sensors on the volar side of the fingers. This paper aimed to use a data glove as the input device to teleoperate the thumb of a humanoid robotic hand. An experiment protocol was developed with only minimum hardware involved to compensate for the differences in kinematic structures between a robotic hand and a human hand. A nonlinear constrained-optimization formulation was proposed to map and calibrate the motion of a human thumb to that of a robotic thumb by minimizing the maximum errors (minimax algorithms) of fingertip position while subject to the constraint of the normals of the surfaces of the thumb and the index fingertips within a friction cone. The proposed approach could be extended to other teleoperation applications, where the master and slave devices differ in kinematic structure

Kinematic Mapping and Calibration of the Thumb Motions for Teleoperating a Humanoid Robot Hand

Mapping and calibration from a human hand to a robot hand pose a challenge due to their differences in kinematic structures. This paper uses the CyberGlove® as the input device for telemanipulating an object with the thumb and the index finger of the Shadow® Dexterous Hand™, with the focus not only on the position but also on the orientation of the thumb fingertip because it is found through experiments conducted on the Shadow Hand that the calibration of tip position alone can lead to unacceptable grasping postures. This paper develops an experiment protocol and proposes a nonlinear optimization formulation that makes the normals of the surfaces of the thumb and index fingertips within the friction cone while subject to fingertip position constraint. The results are verified to be accurate enough to conduct the telemanipulation

A Case Study of ROS Software Re-usability for Dexterous In-Hand Manipulation

Walck G, Cupcic U, Duran TO, Perdereau V. A Case Study of ROS Software Re-usability for Dexterous In-Hand Manipulation. Journal of Software Engineering for Robotics. 2014;5(1):36-47.eal world objects handling requires a complete robot and sensor system that must be managed by an adequate software architecture. The design of such a complex architecture is important not only to fulfill the hardware and software constraints but also to shorten the development and integration time. This paper presents the lessons learned in the integration of a software architecture based on ROS within the European project HANDLE. It focuses on the major concepts of component-based software engineering intrinsically available in the ROS framework and describes the best practices to take advantage of flexibility, interoperability and reconfigurability of packages offered by the ROS community for real world in-hand manipulation. The paper is divided in three parts. In a first place, the core concepts in the ROS framework are presented, detailing the multi-robot and distributed computing capabilities as well as existing software stacks for object manipulation applications. In a second place, a case study is done on the packages used or developed during HANDLE, alternatively describing the concepts related to component-based design patterns and their application. A last part covers integration choices relative to interfacing of the components, coordination and configuration of them in the final application

A Case Study of ROS Software Re-usability for Dexterous In-Hand Manipulation

Real world objects handling requires a complete robot and sensor system that must be managed by an adequate software architecture. This paper presents the lessons learned in the successful integration of a software architecture based on ROS within the European project HANDLE. It focuses on re-usability and adaptability of several packages of the ROS community for the purpose of real world in-hand manipulation. Solutions proposed can be transferred to other arm and hand systems

An Optimization Approach to Teleoperation of the Thumb of a Humanoid Robot Hand: Kinematic Mapping and Calibration

The complex kinematic structure of a human thumb makes it difficult to capture and control the thumb motions. A further complication is that mapping the fingertip position alone leads to inadequate grasping postures for current robotic hands, many of which are equipped with tactile sensors on the volar side of the fingers. This paper aimed to use a data glove as the input device to teleoperate the thumb of a humanoid robotic hand. An experiment protocol was developed with only minimum hardware involved to compensate for the differences in kinematic structures between a robotic hand and a human hand. A nonlinear constrained-optimization formulation was proposed to map and calibrate the motion of a human thumb to that of a robotic thumb by minimizing the maximum errors (minimax algorithms) of fingertip position while subject to the constraint of the normal of the surfaces of the thumb and the index fingertips within a friction cone. The proposed approach could be extended to other teleoperation applications, where the master and slave devices differ in kinematic structure