Modern robotic manipulation systems fall short of human manipulation skills partly because they rely on closing feedback loops exclusively around vision data, which reduces system bandwidth and speed. By developing autonomous grasping reflexes that rely on high-bandwidth force, contact, and proximity data, the overall system speed and robustness can be increased while reducing reliance on vision data. We are developing a new system built around a low-inertia, high-speed arm with nimble fingers that combines a high-level trajectory planner operating at less than 1 Hz with low-level autonomous reflex controllers running upwards of 300 Hz. We characterize the reflex system by comparing the volume of the set of successful grasps for a naive baseline controller and variations of our reflexive grasping controller, finding that our controller expands the set of successful grasps by 55% relative to the baseline. We also deploy our reflexive grasping controller with a simple vision-based planner in an autonomous clutter clearing task, achieving a grasp success rate above 90% while clearing over 100 items.

We introduce a spherical fingertip sensor for dynamic manipulation. It is based on barometric pressure and time-of-flight proximity sensors and is low-latency, compact, and physically robust. The sensor uses a trained neural network to estimate the contact location and three-axis contact forces based on data from the pressure sensors, which are embedded within the sensor's sphere of polyurethane rubber. The time-of-flight sensors face in three different outward directions, and an integrated microcontroller samples each of the individual sensors at up to 200 Hz. To quantify the effect of system latency on dynamic manipulation performance, we develop and analyze a metric called the collision impulse ratio and characterize the end-to-end latency of our new sensor. We also present experimental demonstrations with the sensor, including measuring contact transitions, performing coarse mapping, maintaining a contact force with a moving object, and reacting to avoid collisions.

We present a proprioceptive teleoperation system that uses a reflexive grasping algorithm to enhance the speed and robustness of pick-and-place tasks. The system consists of two manipulators that use quasi-direct-drive actuation to provide highly transparent force feedback. The end-effector has bimodal force sensors that measure 3-axis force information and 2-dimensional contact location. This information is used for anti-slip and re-grasping reflexes. When the user makes contact with the desired object, the re-grasping reflex aligns the gripper fingers with antipodal points on the object to maximize the grasp stability. The reflex takes only 150ms to correct for inaccurate grasps chosen by the user, so the user's motion is only minimally disturbed by the execution of the re-grasp. Once antipodal contact is established, the anti-slip reflex ensures that the gripper applies enough normal force to prevent the object from slipping out of the grasp. The combination of proprioceptive manipulators and reflexive grasping allows the user to complete teleoperated tasks with precision at high speed.

The ability to measure multi-axis contact forces and contact surface normals in real time is critical to allow robots to improve their dexterous manipulation and locomotion abilities. This paper presents a new fingertip sensor for 3-axis contact force and contact location detection, as well as improvements on an existing footpad sensor through use of a new artificial neural network estimator. The fingertip sensor is intended for use in manipulation, while the footpad sensor is intended for high force use in locomotion. Both sensors consist of pressure sensing elements embedded within a rubber hemisphere, and utilize an artificial neural network to estimate the applied forces (fx, fy, and fz), and contact angles (θ and φ) from the individual sensor element readings. The sensors are inherently robust, and the hemispherical shape allows for easy integration into point feet and fingertips. Both the fingertip and footpad sensors demonstrate the ability to track forces and angles accurately over the surface of the hemisphere (θ=±45° and φ=±45°) and can experience up to 25N and 450N normal force, respectively, without saturating. The performance of the sensor is demonstrated with experimental results of dynamic control of a robotic arm with real-time sensor feedback.