SBIR Phase I: Gripper-integrated proximity, contact and force sensing for collaborative robots

The broader impact/commercial potential of this project will be to greatly advance the application of robots and improve robots safety when working together with humans. Integration of embedded proximity sensors into robotic end-effectors with an advanced user-interface control system provides a significant leap from current sensory and control systems available. The advances of this project in sensing and control will expand the current boundaries which limit human interaction with the power of robots. The improvements to both control and sensing in collaborative robots will advance the use of robots in industrial, medical and household applications. Improved accuracy will expand robot use and significantly lower manufacturing costs in many advanced industries. Vast increases in robot safety with this project?s system will allow expanded human interaction including robot care for the needs of the growing senior population. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will advance our understanding of the role tactile sensation plays in robust manipulation and lead to novel means for in-gripper 3D sensing, complementing and in some cases replacing external 3D perception systems. Specifically, this project will demonstrate the role that proximity sensing and zero-force contact sensing play in grasp planning, object registration, and object recognition. A key challenge will be to merge information from two different sensor technologies that both excel in different range regimes, but have poor accuracy otherwise. The proposed covariance-based sensor fusion algorithms will be benchmarked by comparison with 3D models obtained from high-fidelity laser and 3D-scanning systems. A second challenge will be to abstract the resulting capability into easy-to-use programming environments for robotic grasp and manipulation planning, which will be tested with customers in the field.