Obrero: a platform for sensitive manipulation

We are interested in developing sensitive manipulation for humanoid robots: manipulation that is as much about perception as action and is intrinsically responsive to the properties of the object being manipulated; manipulation that does not rely on vision as the main sensor but as a complement. As a first step to achieve sensitive manipulation we have built Obrero, a robotic platform that addresses some of the challenges of this kind of manipulation. In this paper, we present the design, construction and evaluation of this robot. Obrero consists of a very sensitive and force controlled hand, a force controlled arm, and an active vision head. These parts are integrated by a high-speed communication network. The robot is programmed using behavior-based architecture to deal with unknown environments