Don’t Over Think It: Mechanically Intelligent Manipulation

Developing capable, robust robots that can effectively operate in unstructured environments requires reasoning over how embodiment and cognition impact the capability and complexity. In this thesis, we focus on the design of hands, finding a balance between capability and complexity through the lens of mechanical intelligence: the ability of the body to contribute to functionality. We develop two grippers that serve as examples of this idea, Belt Orienting Phalanges and Flexible Robust Observant Gripper. Belt Orienting Phalanges (BOP) enables in-hand manipulation through the addition of two belts on each finger of a parallel-jaw gripper, allowing control over the roll, pitch and a translation of a grasped object. We demonstrate how these motion primitives and other aspects of BOP’s morphology enable the simple adaption of an existing planning frameworks to perform a complex manipulation tasks. Flexible Robust Observant Gripper (FROG) eases perception and control through the structure of each finger, allowing for proprioception and robust grasping while being strong and remaining comparable in complexity to other soft grippers. We demonstrate how these features enable FROG to grasp gently and deal with shape and pose uncertainty.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2023

Author dc:creator

• Xie, Gregory

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Rus, Daniela

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
• Copyright retained by author(s)

Licence dc:rights.uri

• https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/151343

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/151343