Robotic Door Opening

Energid Technologies proposes to develop a remotely supervised robotic door-opening system that will work very effectively with many different mobile platforms and manipulators. To make the system, Energid will use its Actin software toolkit for coordinating motion of the mobile platform and manipulator to place a new type of gripper having an innovative design tailored to manipulating doorknobs, latches, and handles. The action of the gripper will be controlled using Energid’s tree-structured grasping database to ensure broad applicability. The database will select an algorithm using a best match between stored models and calculated doorknob, latch, or handle shapes. To calculate this shape, Energid will use its Selectin machine vision toolkit, which identifies 3D objects automatically using CAD models of the objects. The doorknob, latch, or handle shape, position, and orientation will be identified from camera imagery. A prototype system will be created and tested in simulation using Energid’s simulation-based robot design validation software. The final Phase I design will be tested using pre-existing hardware in Energid’s lab. All software will be implemented for cross-platform application with support for virtually any sensor type, mobile base, and manipulator, enabling broad application.