This paper presents a compliant control method for insertion of complex objects with concavities. Most work on robot assembly using compliant motion control focuses on overcoming jamming conditions for simple peg-in-hole problems, and cannot be used for complex shapes frequently encountered in assembly applications. When an object is being inserted into a hole or slot with a small clearance, a contact path issued to compensate for uncertainties. When the object shape is complex, however, the contact state changes several times and severely, making compliant control difficult. Our algorithm is capable of controlling compliant motion in spite of changing contact states. During the execution of a nominal motion plan, it computes the actual position of the contact point from the force/torque sensor reading using a contact localization algorithm. It then dynamically updates the center of compliance to the computed contact point, and minimizes the chance of jamming and unwanted collisions. The control scheme has been implemented on hardware and tested on the task of inserting a T-shape into a C-shape involving a very tight tolerance. The insertion motion was accomplished by a sequence of 2 translational and 1 rotational compliant motions, and successfully executed by the proposed compliant motion controller.

This paper presents a motion planner for robots in a game situation, in which the agents involved have conflicting goals. More specifically, a human-computer boxing game system is developed in a graphical environment. One boxer is controlled by a human through a motion tracking system, while the other is controlled by a motion planning algorithm. The planner has a defensive and an offensive strategies. The defensive strategy tries to move one of the forearms between the opponent's fist and its body, while the offensive strategy locates an exposed part of the opponent's body and throws a punch at it. To achieve an interactive operation, the motion planner considers only kinematic and geometric constraints during the search. This project is also aimed at integrating a planner with all actual robot, and investigating associated technological bottlenecks.

This paper presents a complete motion planner in three-dimensional changing environment. The robot is either a manipulator or a rigid object that translates and rotates, while obstacles are polyhedra translating and rotating along known trajectories. The motion planner is based on the SANDROS search strategy, which uses a hierarchical, multi-resolution representation of the product space of the time and the configuration space. A solution is found by generating a candidate sequence of subgoals and subsequently computing collision-free path along the sequence. For changing environments it is the first planner for non-point robots that is efficient and guarantees a solution. This planner can control the trade-offs between the computation resource and algorithmic completeness/solution path quality, and thus can fully utilize the available computing power. This algorithm is useful for navigation of mobile robots and submarines, or motion planning of multiple robots by regarding other robots as moving obstacles.