Two-arm manipulation tasks with friction-assisted grasping

Abstract

—The main objective of this paper is to study human dual-arm manipulation tasks and to develop a computational model that predicts the trajectories and force distribution for the coordination of two arms moving an object between two given positions and orientations in a horizontal plane. Our ultimate goal is to understand the dynamics of human dual-arm coordination in order to develop better robot control algorithms. We propose a computational model based on the hypothesis proposed by Uno et al. that suggests that human movements minimize the integral of the norm of the rate of change of actuator torques. We compare the experimental trajectories and force distributions with those obtained from the computational model. The observed trajectories show a significant degree of repeatability across trials and across subjects. We show that the computational model predicts the trajectories and the distribution of forces (torques) for a certain class of trajectories. However, the trajectories in the sagittal and frontal plane are characterized by asymmetric features that are hard to model using any integral cost function. Finally, we show that the computational model can be used to generate smooth trajectories and actuator forces for cooperating robots and discuss the advantages of such an approach to motion planning.