Robot-to-human feedback and automatic object grasping using an RGB-D camera–projector system

MINA: A Robotic Assistant for Hospital Fetching Tasks

In this paper, a robotic Multitasking Intelligent Nurse Aid (MINA) is proposed to assist nurses with everyday object fetching tasks. MINA consists of a manipulator arm on an omni-directional mobile base. Before the operation, an augmented reality interface was used to place waypoints. Waypoints can indicate the location of a patient, supply shelf, and other locations of interest. When commanded to retrieve an object, MINA uses simultaneous localization and mapping to map its environment and navigate to the supply shelf waypoint. At the shelf, MINA builds a 3D point cloud representation of the shelf and searches for barcodes to identify and localize the object it was sent to retrieve. Upon grasping the object, it returns to the user. Collision avoidance is incorporated during the mobile navigation and grasping tasks. We performed experiments to evaluate MINA’s efficacy including with obstacles along the path. The experimental results showed that MINA can repeatedly navigate to the specified waypoints and successfully perform the grasping and retrieval task.

Feature Sensing and Robotic Grasping of Objects with Uncertain Information: A Review

As there come to be more applications of intelligent robots, their task object is becoming more varied. However, it is still a challenge for a robot to handle unfamiliar objects. We review the recent work on the feature sensing and robotic grasping of objects with uncertain information. In particular, we focus on how the robot perceives the features of an object, so as to reduce the uncertainty of objects, and how the robot completes object grasping through the learning-based approach when the traditional approach fails. The uncertain information is classified into geometric information and physical information. Based on the type of uncertain information, the object is further classified into three categories, which are geometric-uncertain objects, physical-uncertain objects, and unknown objects. Furthermore, the approaches to the feature sensing and robotic grasping of these objects are presented based on the varied characteristics of each type of object. Finally, we summarize the reviewed approaches for uncertain objects and provide some interesting issues to be more investigated in the future. It is found that the object’s features, such as material and compactness, are difficult to be sensed, and the object grasping approach based on learning networks plays a more important role when the unknown degree of the task object increases.

Alternating Electric Field-Based Static Gesture-Recognition Technology

Currently, gesture recognition based on electric-field detection technology has received extensive attention, which is mostly used to recognize the position and the movement of the hand, and rarely used for identification of specific gestures. A non-contact gesture-recognition technology based on the alternating electric-field detection scheme is proposed, which can recognize static gestures in different states and dynamic gestures. The influence of the hand on the detection system is analyzed from the principle of electric-field detection. A simulation model of the system is established to investigate the charge density on the hand surface and the potential change of the sensing electrodes. According to the simulation results, the system structure is improved, and the signal-processing circuit is designed to collect the signal of sensing electrodes. By collecting a large amount of data from different operators, the tree-model recognition algorithm is designed and a gesture-recognition experiment is implemented. The results show that the gesture-recognition correct rate is over 90%. With advantages of high response speed, low cost, small volume, and immunity to the surrounding environment, the system could be assembled on a robot that communicates with operators.