MEAM Seminar: “Towards Manipulation of Large Objects by Robotic Edge Rolling with Quori, an Affordable Socially Interactive Humanoid Robot”

Hardware platforms for socially interactive robotics can be limited by cost or lack of functionality. In this talk I will present the overall system—design, hardware, and software—for Quori, a novel, affordable, socially interactive humanoid robot platform for facilitating non-contact human-robot interaction(HRI) research. The design of the system is motivated by feedback sampled from the HRI research community. The overall design maintains a balance of affordability and functionality. Ten Quori platforms have been awarded to a diverse group of researchers from across the United States to facilitate HRI research to build a community database from a common platform.

Motivated by the desire to increase the abilities of a robot like-Quori I will also discuss my past work and current investigation into robotic edge-rolling. I will introduce the concept of robotic edge-rolling, a novel robotic manipulation technique for moving cylindrical objects by rolling them on the circular edge of the bottom face. This method, with possible applications to object transportation, part reorientation, and the like, is an alternative to the traditional grasp-lift-and-carry manipulation, which might not be possible when it comes to handling large, heavy objects beyond the carrying capacity of the robot.

I will conclude with my current work studying how the shape of zero mobility effectors affect the mechanics, and practicality of edge-rolling manipulation and develop planning and controls for transporting objects by edge-rolling manipulation, referred to as Roll and Place(RnP). By studying the mechanics of the edge-rolling task, constraints will be expressed in a way to prescribe and optimize the shape of the zero mobility effectors.