Fumiya Iida

Yue Xie, Xing Wang, Fumiya Iida et al.

Computational design can excite the full potential of soft robotics that has the drawbacks of being highly nonlinear from material, structure, and contact. Up to date, enthusiastic research interests have been demonstrated for individual soft fingers, but the frame design space (how each soft finger is assembled) remains largely unexplored. Computationally design remains challenging for the finger-based soft gripper to grip across multiple geometrical-distinct object types successfully. Including the design space for the gripper frame can bring huge difficulties for conventional optimisation algorithms and fitness calculation methods due to the exponential growth of high-dimensional design space. This work proposes an automated computational design optimisation framework that generates gripper diversity to individually grasp geometrically distinct object types based on a quality-diversity approach. This work first discusses a significantly large design space (28 design parameters) for a finger-based soft gripper, including the rarely-explored design space of finger arrangement that is converted to various configurations to arrange individual soft fingers. Then, a contact-based Finite Element Modelling (FEM) is proposed in SOFA to output high-fidelity grasping data for fitness evaluation and feature measurements. Finally, diverse gripper designs are obtained from the framework while considering features such as the volume and workspace of grippers. This work bridges the gap of computationally exploring the vast design space of finger-based soft grippers while grasping large geometrically distinct object types with a simple control scheme.

Yi Zhang, Fumiya Iida, Fulvio Forni

Robotic cutting is a challenging, contact-rich manipulation task where the robot must simultaneously negotiate unknown object mechanics, large contact forces, and precise motion requirements. Our hypothesis is that this complexity can be alleviated through the design of a physically structured virtual-model controller that uses switched virtual mechanisms to generate a robust, rhythmic rock-chop motion for robotic cutting, without requiring pre-planned trajectories or precise environmental information. Motion is generated by the interaction between the environment, the robot's dynamics, and the virtual forces of the switching virtual mechanism, ultimately realized through the available actuation. Through theoretical analysis and experimental validation, we demonstrate that the controlled robot behavior settles into a stable periodic motion. Experiments with a Franka manipulator demonstrate robust cuts across five different vegetables, achieving sub-millimeter slice accuracy for thicknesses from 1 mm to 6 mm at a rate of nearly one cut per second. The controller maintains high performance despite changes in knife shape or cutting board height, and successfully adapts to a different humanoid manipulator, demonstrating robustness and platform independence.

Ryman Hashem, Fumiya Iida

This paper proposes a soft sensor embedded in a soft ring actuator with five fingers as a soft hand to identify the bifurcation of manipulated objects during the in-hand manipulation process. The manipulation is performed by breaking the symmetry method with an underactuated control system by bifurcating the object to clockwise or counter-clockwise rotations. Two soft sensors are embedded in parallel over a single soft finger, and the difference in the resistance measurements is compared when the finger is displaced or bent in a particular direction, which can identify the bifurcation direction and aid in the break of symmetry approach without the need of external tracking devices. The sensors performance is also characterised by extending and bending the finger without an object interaction. During an experiment that performs a break of symmetry, manipulated objects turn clockwise and counter-clockwise depending on the perturbation and actuation frequency, sensors can track the direction of rotation. The embedded sensors provide a self-sensing capability for implementing a closed-loop control in future work. The soft ring actuator performance presents a self-organisation behaviour with soft fingers rotating an object without a required control for rotating the object. Therefore, the soft fingers are an underactuated system with complex behaviour when interacting with objects that serve in-hand manipulation field.

Tom Duckett, Simon Pearson, Simon Blackmore et al.

Agri-Food is the largest manufacturing sector in the UK. It supports a food chain that generates over £108bn p.a., with 3.9m employees in a truly international industry and exports £20bn of UK manufactured goods. However, the global food chain is under pressure from population growth, climate change, political pressures affecting migration, population drift from rural to urban regions and the demographics of an aging global population. These challenges are recognised in the UK Industrial Strategy white paper and backed by significant investment via a Wave 2 Industrial Challenge Fund Investment ("Transforming Food Production: from Farm to Fork"). Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS) and associated digital technologies are now seen as enablers of this critical food chain transformation. To meet these challenges, this white paper reviews the state of the art in the application of RAS in Agri-Food production and explores research and innovation needs to ensure these technologies reach their full potential and deliver the necessary impacts in the Agri-Food sector.