"RISC" for Industrial Robotics: Recent Results and Open Problems

At the intersection of robotics, computational geometry, and manufacturingengineering, we have identifieda collection of research problems with near-term industrial applications. The common thread is robot systems with Reduced Intricacy in Sensing and Control (RISC ), such as light beam sensors and parallel-jaw grippers. We conjecture that such systems, coupled with appropriate algorithms, are capable of recognizing and orienting a broad class of industrial parts. When compared with general-purpose robots, the resultingsystems could be: (1) lower in cost, (2) more reliable and (3) easier to reconfigure. The proposed hardware bears a close resemblance to existing "hard" automation; what is new is the application of computational methods for robust design and control of these systems, and more extensive use of simple sensors. By focusing on a small vocabulary of simple hardware, planning become computationally tractable and we can in some cases make guarantees about the existe...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1994
• Where: ICRA
• Authors: John F. Canny, Kenneth Y. Goldberg
• Keywords: ICRA 1994, Industrial Parts, Light Beam Sensors, Near-term Industrial Applications, Robotics