Carnegie Mellon University

Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America, Inc.

Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha

Nancy S Pollard

Yasuhiro Ota

Junggon Kim

James J Kuffner

Daniele Moro

Kai-Hung Chang

Kunihiro Iwamoto

Stelian Coros

Cornelia Ulrike Bauer

Dominik Bauer

Jonathan King

A manipulation device includes an appendage extending from a base, the appendage comprising a flexible material having a resting pose and adapted to be deformed into a plurality of different poses, and at least one tendon attached to an end of the appendage and passing through the base or a portion of the appendage between the base and the distal end, such that actuation of the at least one tendon causes deformation of the appendage from the resting pose to a new pose. Systems and methods for fabricating and optimizing a manipulation device are also provided.

Flexible manipulation device and method for fabricating the same

Methods and computer program products for generating robot grasp patterns are disclosed. In one embodiment, a method for generating robot grasp patterns includes generating a plurality of approach rays associated with a target object. Each approach ray of the plurality of approach rays extends perpendicularly from a surface of the target object. The method further includes generating at least one grasp pattern for each approach ray to generate a grasp pattern set of the target object, calculating a grasp quality score for each individual grasp pattern of the grasp pattern set, and comparing the grasp quality score of each individual grasp pattern with a grasp quality threshold. The method further includes selecting individual grasp patterns of the grasp pattern set having a grasp quality score that is greater than the grasp quality threshold, and providing the selected individual grasp patterns to the robot for on-line manipulation of the target object.

Methods and computer-program products for generating grasp patterns for use by a robot

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Pittsburgh, PA, United States of America

Nancy S Pollard