Experiments with Dynamic Skills

Hirohiko Arai and Oussama Khatib

Proceedings of 1994 Japan-USA Symposium on Flexible Automation, pp.81-84, Kobe, Japan, July 1994.

[Abstract]

When a human manipulates an object, he does not always grasp it firmly like a robot. It is common that the object is manipulated by dexterously using its inertia, while being grasped loosely. The purpose of this study is to investigate such skills in the robotic manipulation. The class of manipulation tasks considered here involve a phase in which the object and end-effector only partly maintain the contact. The contact edge is treated as a passive joint. The position and velocity of the object can be changed by applying control through the contact. In this paper, we deal with the rotation of a cubic object on a flat end-effector (paddle). After being released from the surface of the paddle, the object is supported only by the contact edge, which is considered as a passive joint, and the rotation of the object is controlled. The experimental results have shown successful dynamic manipulation of a cubic object.