Abstract:
Mobile robot bases have been developed over many decades, but only recently have researchers added arms to these bases, opening up the rich field of mobile manipulation. Most of these robots either need wide, heavy, statically-stable bases that may or may not be omnidirectional to support the arms and provide stability. Such robot bases, in turn, severely limit maneuvering agility in cluttered human environments. Insufficient agility, dexterity, and strength have hindered mobile manipulators to assist humans in the workplace and at home. Unlike its statically stable counterparts, ballbots are dynamically-stable mobile robots that balance on a single ball. The ballbot class of robots can be more effective assisting people since they are omnidirectional, capable of moving with speed and grace comparable to humans, can be tall enough for eye-level interaction, and slender enough to navigate through cluttered human environments. In this talk, I will present our proposed new dexterous and agile mobile manipulator based on the CMU ballbot and a custom-designed pair of 7-DOF robotic arms. In the process, I will show a feedforward compensation based control law to successfully transport a heavy (10kg) payload with the ballbot, the design rationale behind our pair of human-like and strong 7-DOF arms, as well as some preliminary hardware results that highlight the potential of the new platform.

Committee:
Ralph Hollis (Advisor)
Jean Oh
Hartmut Geyer
Nitish Thatte