A Kitchen Assistant Manipulation System of a Variety of Dishes based on Shape Estimation with Tracing Dish Surfaces by Sensing Proximity and Touch Information

Abstract

We have developed a kitchen in which a robot arm with a hand is incorporated. The robot was made for assisting with our work in kitchen. Manipulation of a variety of dishes is the main problem for the purpose. For realizing the manipulation, we developed a one-DOF hand equipped with multiple sensors. In this paper, we present the robot system estimating aproximate position and shape of dishes using these sensors based on sensor-based tracing. We also present a method of manipulating dishes grasplessly to deal with difficult setting of dishes. In the following experiment, we demonstrate the robot clears away basic three types of dishes by picking them off a tray and placing them into a dish washer.