Tool Macgyvering: Tool Construction Using Geometric Reasoning
This addresses tool creation for robotics in improvised environments, but it is incremental as it focuses on one specific level of a broader problem.
The paper tackles the problem of tool construction from available parts, formalizing tool Macgyvering and presenting a computational framework with a novel geometric reasoning algorithm. They validated the approach by constructing three tools using a 7-DOF robot arm.
MacGyvering is defined as creating or repairing something in an inventive or improvised way by utilizing objects that are available at hand. In this paper, we explore a subset of Macgyvering problems involving tool construction, i.e., creating tools from parts available in the environment. We formalize the overall problem domain of tool Macgyvering, introducing three levels of complexity for tool construction and substitution problems, and presenting a novel computational framework aimed at solving one level of the tool Macgyvering problem, specifically contributing a novel algorithm for tool construction based on geometric reasoning. We validate our approach by constructing three tools using a 7-DOF robot arm.