Technische Universität München Robotics and Embedded Systems
 

SFB453 Project T4: Robot-Assisted Handling of Limp and Deformable Objects

 

Robot-Assisted handling of Limp and Deformable Objects

This project is part of the Collaborative Research Centre 453 "Wirklichkeitsnahe Telepräsenz und Teleaktion", which is funded by the German Research Foundation DFG.

Like all other transfer projects, T4 is conducted in cooperation with an industrial partner. We were able to acquire Mitsubishi Electric as a partner for this project, a company with outstanding experience on the field of industrial robotics. The primary objective of this project is the transfer and application of expertise, which was obtained in project I4: i.e. techniques for the recognition, tracking, modelling and prediction of deformable objects (particularly thread material) in surgical environments will be transferred to industrial applications. Analogies are manifold: surgical threads show high felxibility, deformability and limpness. These features can also be found in assembly material like cables, wire straps, tubes and sealings. Due to the mentioned material properties, handling of such structures is extremely diffcult.

First results for tackling the challenges that arise with limp materials have already been developed in project I4. Surgical threads have been successfully segmented and their geometrical features have been extracted. In addtion, the corresponding operation environment has been reconstructed from stereo images. For further processing, the structures are modelled as splines and free-form surfaces.

Autonomous Execution of a Limp Object Handling Task

This video shows completion of the full autonomous task, which consists of several independent steps:

Control Framework for the Experimental Setup

Autonomous Execution of a Limp Object Handling Task (First steps)

People

Former Members

Student Projects

[1] Binh An Tran. Detektion, Tracking und Robotergestützte Handhabung linearer deformierbarer Objekte, 2010. Master's Thesis, Department of Electrical Engineering, Technische Universität München. [ .bib | .pdf ]
[2] Alexander Plopski. Entwicklung einer markerbasierten visuellen kontrollschnittstelle für insdustrielle roboter, 2010. Bachelor's Thesis, Department of Informatics, Technische Universität München. [ .bib | .pdf ]
[3] Xuan Tuong Nguyen. Real-time pedestrian detection and tracking on moving vehicle, 2010. Thesis, Department of Computer Engineering, Nanyang Technological University (TUM exchange program), Singapore. [ .bib | .pdf ]
[4] Matthias Hellerer. Potential field based position control for mitsubishi RV-6S industrial robots, 2009. Bachelor's Thesis, Department of Informatics, Technische Universität München. [ .bib | .pdf ]

Publications

[1] Thomas Müller, Binh An Tran, and Alois Knoll. Automatic distribution of vision-tasks on computing clusters. In Proceedings of IS&T / SPIE Electronic Imaging, 2011. [ DOI | .bib | .pdf ]
[2] Thomas Müller and Alois Knoll. Evolution of attention mechanisms for early visual processing. In Proceedings of IS&T / SPIE Electronic Imaging, 2011. [ DOI | .bib | .pdf ]
[3] Nguyen Xuan Tuong, Thomas Müller, and Alois Knoll. Robust pedestrian detection and tracking from a moving vehicle. In Proceedings of IS&T / SPIE Electronic Imaging, 2011. [ DOI | .bib | .pdf ]
[4] Thomas Müller and Alois Knoll. A generic approach to realtime robot control and parallel processing for industrial scenarios. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Industrial Technology, 2010. [ DOI | .bib | .pdf ]
[5] Thomas Müller, Binh An Tran, and Alois Knoll. A flexible robotics and automation system: Parallel visual processing, realtime actuator control, and task automation for limp object handling. In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics, 2010. [ .bib | .pdf ]
[6] Marwan Radi, Andrea Reiter, Michael F. Zäh, Thomas Müller, and Alois Knoll. Telepresence technology for production: From manual to automated assembly. In Proceedings of EuroHaptics 2010, 2010. [ DOI | .bib | .pdf ]
[7] Thomas Müller and Alois Knoll. Virtualization techniques for cross platform automated software builds, tests and deployment. In Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Software Engineering Advances, Porto, Portugal, 2009. [ .bib | .pdf ]
[8] Thomas Müller and Alois Knoll. Humanoid early visual processing using attention mechanisms. In Proceedings of Cognitive Humanoid Vision WS at IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, Daejeon, Korea, 2008. [ .bib | .pdf ]