Two ball juggling with high-speed hand-arm and high-speed vision system

Humans can perform fast and skillful manipulations using various parts of the body by effectively utilizing the dynamics of the targets. Visual sensation is the most important human sense used for such manipulations. Juggling is one such example involving skillful and dynamic manipulations, and visual information is essential for it to be successful. Previously, there have been several studies about robotic juggling. However, none of these studies have considered cases in which a human-like multifingered hand-arm is used for the robotic juggling. The purpose of this study is to achieve two-ball juggling using our robotic hand-arm, which has three general purpose fingers, and stereo vision. Image processing is executed at 500 fps using a high-speed vision system and graphics processing unit (GPU). The trajectory of the robotic hand-arm is generated based on the ball´s estimated dropping position and moment, and the robot catches the ball. The juggling motion is achieved by repeating this cycle. Therefore, the results show that the robot successfully juggles two balls using our hand-arm system.