Design for Dexterity

The intelligence and the adaptability to perform unexpected tasks with minimal training will be the key to robotic systems in the future. Improving machine intelligence will require a versatile and powerful sub system for controlling the manipulators. The intelligent control of the robotic arm cannot be designed for a narrow spectrum of tasks. The system architecture should allow complex tasks to be incrementally built upon the existing system. Innovation in both the robotic hardware and the planning algorithms will be required in next generation robotic manipulators capable of adapting to changing environments. In this project UtopiaCompression (UC) with our collaborators will design a humanoid robotic hand manipulator capable of both fine and coarse control. The robotic hand design is drawn from the synergistic biomechanics of the human hand. The multi-objective motion planning also imitates the human capability of concurrent task execution. The control architecture software will be layered with a clear abstraction between the task level intelligence and algorithms specific to the control of the arm-hand system. The design philosophy is to allow the system to be flexible to support the different requirements of real world tasks.