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An approach to object-level stiffness regulation of hand-arm systems subject to under-actuation constraints

Ruiz Garate, Virginia; Ajoudani, Arash

Authors

Virginia Ruiz Garate

Arash Ajoudani



Abstract

When using a tool with a robotic hand-arm system, the stiffness at the grasped object plays a key role in the interaction with the environment, allowing the successful execution of the task. However, the rapidly increasing use of under-actuated hands in robotic systems due to their robustness and simplicity of control, pose limitations to the achievable object-level stiffness. Indeed, due to the serial coupling of the hand and the arm, the resulting object-level stiffness is determined by the most compliant of both elements. To address this problem, we propose a novel controller that takes into account the limited achievable geometry of the object stiffness ellipsoid given by a hand with under-actuation constraints, and exploits the contribution of the robotic arm in reshaping the final stiffness towards the desired profile. The under-actuation is illustrated by a coordinated stiffening of the hand fingers. The proposed method is experimentally validated by a hand-arm system performing a peg-in-hole task.

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Aug 12, 2020
Online Publication Date Aug 27, 2020
Publication Date Nov 1, 2020
Deposit Date Mar 10, 2021
Journal Autonomous Robots
Print ISSN 0929-5593
Electronic ISSN 1573-7527
Publisher Springer (part of Springer Nature)
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 44
Issue 8
Pages 1505-1517
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s10514-020-09942-9
Keywords Artificial Intelligence
Public URL https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/7033342
Additional Information Received: 2 July 2019; Accepted: 12 August 2020; First Online: 27 August 2020