Yasuhiro Ota

Physically Based Grasp Quality Evaluation Under Pose Uncertainty

Although there has been great progress in robot grasp planning, automatically generated grasp sets using a quality metric are not as robust as human-generated grasp sets when applied to real problems. Most previous research on grasp quality metrics has focused on measuring the quality of established grasp contacts after grasping, but it is difficult to reproduce the same planned final grasp configuration with a real robot hand, which makes the quality evaluation less useful in practice. In this study, we focus more on the grasping process, which usually involves changes in contact and object location, and explore the efficacy of using dynamic simulation in estimating the likely success or failure of a grasp in the real environment. Among many factors that can possibly affect the result of grasping, we particularly investigated the effect of considering object dynamics and pose uncertainty on the performance in estimating the actual grasp success rates measured from experiments. We observed that considering both dynamics and uncertainty improved the performance significantly, and when applied to automatic grasp set generation, this method generated more stable and natural grasp sets compared with a commonly used method based on kinematic simulation and force-closure analysis.

Physically-based grasp quality evaluation under uncertainty

In this paper new grasp quality measures considering both object dynamics and pose uncertainty are proposed. Dynamics of the object is incorporated into our grasping simulation to capture the change of its pose and contact points during grasping. Pose uncertainty is considered by running multiple simulations starting from slightly different initial poses sampled from a probability distribution model. A simple robotic grasping strategy is simulated and the quality score of the resulting grasp is evaluated from the simulation result. The effectiveness of the new quality measures on predicting the actual grasp success rate is shown through a real robot experiment.

Wire-Driven Bipedal Robot

In this paper, a novel mechanical structure and original control architecture for a wire-driven bipedal robot are introduced. Whereas conventional direct motor driven bipedal robots are bulky and consume a lot of power, the worlds first wire-driven bipedal humanoid robot introduced in this paper is lightweight, flexible, and power efficient. This architecture is accomplished via an innovative arrangement of actuators that reflects human muscle concentrations. Furthermore, this design reduces the risk of injury, making it safer for human interaction

Partner robots — From development to implementation

Toyota has been developing industrial robots since the 1980s. In recent years, man-machine cooperative robots that assist people s skills have gradually been put into practical use. Now, Toyota is further evolving a number of robot technologies born at production sites to develop Partner Robots that work in harmony with people. Toyota is specifically considering four development areas: (1) manufacturing support, (2) short-distance personal mobility, (3) nursing and healthcare support, and (4) support for work around the home. Some scenes of Partner Robot operation in each of these four fields are mentioned, as well as the essential technologies embedded in Toyota Partner Robots, are then introduced in the presentation. Lastly, issues that need to be resolved to bring these robots into truly useful and practical in our society are described.