“Mechanical Intelligence” in Robotic Manipulation: Good Design Makes Everything Easier

Abstract

The human hand is the pinnacle of dexterity – it has the ability to powerfully grasp a wide range of object sizes and shapes as well as delicately manipulate objects held within the fingertips. Current robotic and prosthetic systems, however, have only a fraction of that manual dexterity. My group attempts to address this gap in three main ways: examining the mechanics and design of effective hands, studying biological hand function as inspiration and performance benchmarking, and developing novel control approaches that accommodate task uncertainty. In terms of hand design, we strongly prioritize passive mechanics, including incorporating adaptive underactuated transmissions and carefully tuned compliance, and seek to maximize open-loop performance while minimizing complexity. In this talk, I will discuss how constraints imparted by external contacts in robotic manipulation and legged locomotion affect the mobility and control of the mechanism, introduce ways that these can be redressed through novel design approaches, and demonstrate how our group has been able to apply these concepts to produce simple and robust grasping and dexterous manipulation for tasks that are difficult or impossible to perform using traditional approaches.