Object´s Rolling Manipulations of Dual Robot Hands with Tactile Sensor

This paper describes the experiments in which two industrial robots attempted to roll an object by holding it between the right and the left hands. The palms of the robot hands are used to manipulate the object. Tactile sensors with the functions of acquiring the tactual images and sensing the forces from the arrayed sensing elements were manufactured for these experiments. To rotate the object, the robot hand holds it with both palms. The use of the tactile sensors are able to manipulate an object between both hand, although it is difficult for the hand with force sensor to do a rolling manipulation of an object. The tactile sensing system distinguish the pattern of an object´s posture, a direction of the hand manipulation, the supporting force of the hand and a trajectory of the hand. The experiments for rolling the object of a square pillar and a sphere are succeeded by two sets of robot hand.