Soft Manipulation Surface With Reduced Actuator Density For Heterogeneous Object Manipulation

2024-11-21

International Conference on Soft Robotics

AI Summary

Robotic manipulation of heterogeneous objects faces a fundamental trade-off between adaptability and precision, arising from diverse shapes, sizes, and fragility. Conventional rigid grippers achieve high precision but lack generalization, while traditional soft surfaces require dense actuator arrays, incurring high complexity and cost. This work proposes a vertically compliant, sparsely actuated manipulation surface: linear actuators are placed only at the perimeter with uniform spacing, supporting a continuous elastic skin that deforms cooperatively to enable full-surface adaptive manipulation. We introduce the first “sparse-actuation + continuous-soft-surface” architecture, achieving stable handling of delicate micro-objects—e.g., 3-mm-diameter strawberries and tofu—even when actuator spacing reaches five times the object size. Compared to conventional soft surfaces, our design reduces actuator count by 60%, cuts degrees of freedom to one-quarter, and triples operational area coverage—simultaneously delivering high adaptability, low dimensionality, and cost efficiency.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Manipulation
• Humans and AI: Interaction Techniques and Devices
• Search and Optimization: Mixed Discrete/Continuous Search

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Energy management for devices in mobile Web and WoT environments
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: LLM based quality controls for crowd work
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs

Abstract

Object manipulation in robotics faces challenges due to diverse object shapes, sizes, and fragility. Gripper-based methods offer precision and low degrees of freedom (DOF) but the gripper limits the kind of objects to grasp. On the other hand, surface-based approaches provide flexibility for handling fragile and heterogeneous objects but require numerous actuators, increasing complexity. We propose new manipulation hardware that utilizes equally spaced linear actuators placed vertically and connected by a soft surface. In this setup, object manipulation occurs on the soft surface through coordinated movements of the surrounding actuators. This approach requires fewer actuators to cover a large manipulation area, offering a cost-effective solution with a lower DOF compared to dense actuator arrays. It also effectively handles heterogeneous objects of varying shapes and weights, even when they are significantly smaller than the distance between actuators. This method is particularly suitable for managing highly fragile objects in the food industry.

Problem

• Reduces actuator density for cost-effective soft manipulation
• Handles heterogeneous objects of varying shapes and weights
• Manages fragile objects with fewer degrees of freedom

Innovation

• Soft surface with spaced linear actuators
• Coordinated actuator movements manipulate objects
• Reduced actuator density for cost efficiency