Intuitive User Interfaces for Mobile Manipulation Tasks

This article describes interactive methods that can ease difficult manipulation tasks in Search & Rescue operations. We discuss the requirements that are necessary for a telemanipulation system to be successfully used. These include not just correctness of generated motion but also ergonomy, mobility and interactivity of the operator’s interface. We show that grippers with one or more degrees of freedom can be intuitively controlled by different interface mechanisms, supported by 3D vision systems. Tests are performed both in the simulation environment and with real grippers. A practical pipeline for a direct control and learning the system is also presented

Introducing modern robotics with ROS and Arduino, including case studies

This paper describes our experience with introducing modern robotics through Robot Operating System. ROS framework allows rapid robot prototyping and gives access to many state-of-the-art robotic solutions. It is however, software oriented and requires its users to understand well software development ideas and methods. While teaching undergraduate students ROS, we came up with some solutions how to introduce it to people without a deep background in computer science. The paper presents our Mymodel robot application that simplifies modeling of the robots using URDF format and some Arduino based programs. We have also reported results of students’ projects