Human-based framework for the assembly of elastic objects by a dual-arm robot

Abstract

This paper proposes a new framework for planning assembly tasks involving elastic parts. As an example of these kind of assembly tasks, we deal with the insertion of ring-shaped objects into a cylinder by a dual-arm robot. The proposed framework is a combination of human movements to determine the overall assembly strategy and an optimization-based motion planner to generate the robot trajectories. The motion of the human’s hands, more specifically, the motion of the fingers gripping the object is captured by a Leap Motion Controller. Then, key points in the recorded trajectory of the position and orientation of the human’s fingers are extracted. These points are used as partial goals in the optimization-based motion planner that generates the robot arms’ trajectories which minimize the object’s deformation. Through experimental results it was verified the validity of the extracted key points from the human’s movements that enable the robot to successfully assemble ring-shaped elastic objects. We compared these results with the assembly done by purely repeating all of the human’s hands movements.