Cable manipulation with a tactile-reactive gripper
Name
02783649211027233.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
5.64 MB
Format
Unknown
Checksum (MD5)
dbb6793067fd061f11e35335b40f4371
Author(s)
She, Yu
Wang, Shaoxiong
Dong, Siyuan
Sunil, Neha
Rodriguez Garcia, Alberto
Adelson, Edward H
Date Issued
2021
Journal
International Journal of Robotics Research
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Citation
She, Yu, Wang, Shaoxiong, Dong, Siyuan, Sunil, Neha, Rodriguez, Alberto et al. 2021. "Cable manipulation with a tactile-reactive gripper." International Journal of Robotics Research, 40 (12-14).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Cables are complex, high-dimensional, and dynamic objects. Standard approaches to manipulate them often rely on conservative strategies that involve long series of very slow and incremental deformations, or various mechanical fixtures such as clamps, pins, or rings. We are interested in manipulating freely moving cables, in real time, with a pair of robotic grippers, and with no added mechanical constraints. The main contribution of this paper is a perception and control framework that moves in that direction, and uses real-time tactile feedback to accomplish the task of following a dangling cable. The approach relies on a vision-based tactile sensor, GelSight, that estimates the pose of the cable in the grip, and the friction forces during cable sliding. We achieve the behavior by combining two tactile-based controllers: (1) cable grip controller, where a PD controller combined with a leaky integrator regulates the gripping force to maintain the frictional sliding forces close to a suitable value; and (2) cable pose controller, where an linear–quadratic regulator controller based on a learned linear model of the cable sliding dynamics keeps the cable centered and aligned on the fingertips to prevent the cable from falling from the grip. This behavior is possible with the use of reactive gripper fitted with GelSight-based high-resolution tactile sensors. The robot can follow 1 m of cable in random configurations within two to three hand regrasps, adapting to cables of different materials and thicknesses. We demonstrate a robot grasping a headphone cable, sliding the fingers to the jack connector, and inserting it. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first implementation of real-time cable following without the aid of mechanical fixtures. Videos are available at http://gelsight.csail.mit.edu/cable/
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
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Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1177/02783649211027233
