Development of an assistive mobile robot system -the grasping strategy by sensors fusion

Abstract

It is suggested that the burdens of care for elderly people in Japan are increasing due to the decreasing birthrate and aging society. Therefore, in our laboratory, the development of an "Assistive Mobile robot System (AMOS)" is pushed forward. AMOS is composed of the robot hand, the manipulator, the mobile vehicle, and cameras. AMOS carries an object and supports the independent daily life of the caregivers to reduce burdens of the caretaker. In this paper, we propose the control system of the robot hand to grasp an object stably, according to differences in the hardness with tactile sensors, and to approach efficiently before grasping an object with capacitive sensors. Tactile sensors and capacitive sensors are designed to be applied to a variety of robot hand. We evaluated the effects of these sensors. Then, we demonstrated the effects of control systems with these sensors.