Force based manipulation of Jenga blocks

Our goal is to copy human dexterity of manipulation with force feeling to robot manipulation. We adopt Jenga game as our first target task. This paper describes our strategic implementation how robot removes blocks from Jenga tower. In this paper, we make Jenga kinematics model. First we show kinematics model of stable Jenga tower. Another kinematics model is of transition period of removing block. Using these kinematics models, robot manipulator chooses the most safe block to remove. But of course, there exist difference of acting force between ideal model and actual Jenga tower. So the robot judges the acting force against ideal one whether the block can be removed or not. When it is judged not to remove, the robot changes to next candidate to remove. According this force based manipulation strategy, the robot has achieved to remove more than twelve blocks form Jenga block tower. During competition with human, the robot can remove a block after more than twenty blocks are removed.