Intelligent manipulation and grasping: a challenge for near future robotics

Citation

Molfino, R. (2005), "Intelligent manipulation and grasping: a challenge for near future robotics", Industrial Robot, Vol. 32 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.2005.04932aaa.002

Intelligent manipulation and grasping: a challenge for near future robotics

Intelligent manipulation and grasping: a challenge for near future robotics

Keywords: Materials handling equipment, Robotics

Robots are being used in an ever broadening range of application fields and are becoming pervasive in daily life.

Robots are employed to perform service and work tasks in industry for goods manufacturing and assembly. Robots present challenging applications such as in agriculture where they help in sowing, pruning, treatment and harvesting operations. Today robots are developed to work in harsh and dangerous environments, e.g. in space, underwater and in the case of catastrophic events in order for human beings to avoid unsafe and unsecure situations.

In the near future robots will be considered as a vital part of the built environment for intelligent actuation, continuous monitoring and maintenance purposes. Academic and industrial researchers are now designing and building robots to help, assist and entertain humans in daily life. Robots are also needed in medicine and healthcare.

This is only a partial perspective of the robotic applications; the panorama is growing day by day.

Robots need to be able to interact with their surroundings in order to be useful as service agents in all these areas and others. In order to perform such physical interactions robots need to be equipped with suitable grasping and handling tools.

Manipulation skills are very important requirements: human society needs intelligent “blue-collar” robots, which are able to interact with the environment, substituting for humans in heavy, boring and unsafe work. They should also do tasks that humans cannot (at a micro and nano level).

The abilities of these robots to work actively and efficiently in dynamic environments or to manipulate soft and delicate things, or micro and nano parts have not yet been fully realised, and they are still the subject of research by the robotic community.

Reliable and robust solutions in the manipulation and grasping field will help in extending flexible automation in the secondary sector, in particular in the traditional industries of food, textile/clothing, shoes/leather and paper. Industries that, in more advanced countries, with high labour cost are now suffering and will benefit from innovative flexible automation solutions in order to produce better, faster and cheaper goods. New grasping and manipulation devices will also offer qualified sustainable tools for both primary and tertiary sectors, so allowing improvement, sustainability and efficiency while gaining human safety and security margins.

To summarize, intelligent manipulation and grasping:

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  offer the possibility of widening robotic application fields by allowing the correct interaction of robots with artificial and natural environments, with humans and with other robots;

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  extend the automation effort towards sectors where delicate, soft and limp materials have to be handled;

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  improve the level of hygiene and cleanliness of products and services, matching regulations and real needs; and

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  open the chance to work at the micro and nano scale where human hands cannot be used, typically for assembly micro- systems or for pharmaceutical and medical applications.

The development of qualified and successful manipulation and grasping tools requires multi and interdisciplinary work where mechanical creativity, surface interaction, physics knowledge, intelligent control competences, communication and information-sharing experience, sensors and actuation components miniaturization skills, cooperation and coordination strategies are harmonically joined.

The animal world offers many examples of intelligent manipulation and grasping that inspire robotic researchers and new perspectives are nowadays opening on collaborative fusion of neurosciences and robotics.

Looking at lower-level animal beings, it is interesting to outline that the borders between locomotion and manipulation are gone: the snake uses the same body structure to move and to grasp.

Coordinating sensors and grasping actions are typical of the bio-world and can be applied to robotic grasping in different ways:

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  to match the grasping/holding strengths to the stiffness of the object by controlling the contact forces;

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  to adapt the metamorphic mechanisms to the actual object shape;

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  for haptic exploration through a sensorized handling device using active sensing;

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  to manipulate the grasped object by controlling its motion, typically moving only the fingers;and

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  to grasp on the fly mobile objects.

Many chances are offered today owing to the availability of new smart and intelligent stimuli sensitive materials.

Intelligent manipulation and grasping systems are vital parts of robotics for many applications and environments in advancing manufacturing automation, making safe hazardous operations and enhancing the quality of life in different ways with the significant perspectives of social and economic impacts within short- and medium-term time-frames.

Rezia Molfino Based at the Laboratory of Design and Measurement for Automation and Robotics, Department of Mechanics and Machine Design, University of Genova, Genova, Italy