Service Robots in Catering Applications: A Review and Future Challenges.

“Hello, I’m the TERMINATOR, and I’ll be your server today”. Diners might soon be feeling this greeting, with Optimus Prime in the kitchen and Wall-E then sending your order to C-3PO. In our daily lives, a version of that future is already showing up. Robotics companies are designing robots to handle tasks, including serving, interacting, collaborating, and helping. These service robots are intended to coexist with humans and engage in relationships that lead them to a better quality of life in our society. Their constant evolution and the arising of new challenges lead to an update of the existing systems. This update provides a generic vision of two questions: the advance of service robots, and more importantly, how these robots are applied in society (professional and personal) based on the market application. In this update, a new category is proposed: catering robotics. This proposal is based on the technological advances that generate new multidisciplinary application fields and challenges. Waiter robots is an example of the catering robotics. These robotic platforms might have social capacities to interact with the consumer and other robots, and at the same time, might have physical skills to perform complex tasks in professional environments such as restaurants. This paper explains the guidelines to develop a waiter robot, considering aspects such as architecture, interaction, planning, and executionpost-print13305 K

Characterization and study of the primitive dynamic movements required to bi-manipulate a box

Automating the action of finding the opening side of a box is not possible if the robot is not capable of reaching and evaluating all of its sides. To achieve this goal, in this paper, three different movement strategies to bi-manipulate a box are studied: overturning, lifting, and spinning it over a surface. First of all, the dynamics involved in each of the three movement strategies are studied using physics equations. Then, a set of experiments are conducted to determine if the real response of the humanoid robot, TEO, to a box is consistent with the expected answer based on theoretical calculus. After the dynamics validation, the information on the forces and the position in the end effectors is used to characterize these movements and create its primitives. These primitive movements will be used in the future to design a hybrid position–force control in order to adapt the movements to different kinds of boxes. The structure of this control is also presented in this pape

Multi-ZMP Evaluation for Objects Transport Tasks in Humanoid Robots

Este documento fue presentado en las XL Jornadas de Automática 2019.Este artículo presenta un enfoque de control postural de un robot humanoide camarero. En investigaciones anteriores, se propusieron dos métodos para tratar esta complejidad. La primera fue una mejora para el control del equilibrio del cuerpo (locomoción) y la segunda fue un método para aplicar los conceptos clásicos del equilibrio del cuerpo para transportar objetos en una bandeja (manipulación). Este enfoque se basa en el concepto de un sistema de evaluación multi-ZMP para controlar la estabilidad del objeto y el cuerpo. Ambos métodos se desarrollaron de forma independiente, evitando perturbaciones entre ellos. La integración en una arquitectura de control postural de todo el cuerpo es un reto para el rendimiento de ambos méetodos, debido a la gran influencia entre ellos. En este artículo, se presentan ambos métodos para tratar la complejidad de la tarea humanoide. Es decir, cómo estos métodos se han integrado en un controlador postural humanoide y los resultados de la interacción.This article presents a whole-body postural control approach of a waiter humanoid robot. In previous research, two methods for dealing with this complexity were pro- posed. The rst one was an improvement for balance control of the body (locomotion) and, the second one was a method to apply classic body balance concepts for transporting objects on a tray (manipulation). This approach is based on the concept of a multi-ZMP evaluation system to control object and body stability. Both methods were developed independently, avoiding cross-linked perturbations. The integration into a whole-body postural control architecture is challenging for the performance of both methods, due to the big in uence between them. In this article, both methods for dealing with humanoid task complexity are presented. That is, how these methods have been integrated into a humanoid postural controller and the results of the interaction.The research leading to these results has received funding from the HUMASOFT project, with reference DPI2016-75330-P, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, and from the RoboCity2030-DIH-CM Madrid Robotics Digital Innovation Hub (“Robótica aplicada a la mejora de la calidad de vida de los ciudadanos, Fase IV”; S2018/NMT-4331), funded by “Programas de Actividades I+D en la Comunidad de Madrid” and cofunded by Structural Funds of the EU