DURIP: Lightweight Robotic Arms for ESCHER Humanoid Robot Allowing for Safe Human-Robot Interaction
Abstract
This DURIP proposal is for two pairs of lightweight robotic arms for use on the humanoid robot ESCHER (Electric Series Compliant Humanoid for Emergency Response) to allow the robot to operate safely around people while performing watch on the ship, conducting maintenance tasks, and responding to damage control events. The PIs of this proposal have a recently been funded a 3 year project from ONR on a Hybrid Team concept, where a humanoid robot would be developed for use on navy ships to assist humans with tasks such as watch, maintenance, and damage control. This is an extension of the successfully completed Shipboard Autonomous Fire Fighting Robot (SAFFiR), which was used to put out a fire onboard a navy ship (November2014). The request for these new arms stems from the need to further enhance the robot through more extensive use of the arms to perform balancing / bracing, complex manipulation that incorporates feedback with sensors in the arms, and increased controllability in the arms for safer operation around humans. The requested Adroit Mk2 arms from HDT Global are more durable than current arms, include impedance control, have been tested and determined to have high reliability, and joint torque measurement for assisting in manipulation and body motion tasks.These arms were previously incorporated into the robot ESCHER through a temporary loan arrangement for the DARPA Robotic Challenge, completed in June 2015. Incorporating these new arms would significantly increase the robot performance capability for the existing project and allow for future projects in areas not possible with the existing hardware, in particular havingrobots working safely and collaboratively with humans. This would allow students to perform research on these new areas.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Aug 12, 2016
- Source ID
- N000141612416
Entities
People
- Brian Lattimer
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- Virginia Tech