The Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS)

The Center for Education and Research in
Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS)
Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security

Deformable Object Manipulation with Tactile Reactive Control

Research Areas: Autonomous Systems

Principal Investigator: Yu She

Deformable objects are considerably common in our daily lives, such as cables, fabrics, fruits, vegetables, and organs. But they are very difficult for robotic manipulation because they can deform into any complex shape. In addition, accurate modeling of deformable objects is extremely challenging, if not possible. Existing robotic systems are essentially designed for rigid object manipulation. We plan to investigate robotic manipulation of deformable objects with novel tactile-reactive grippers and high-resolution tactile sensors. Our previous work has successfully demonstrated the robotic manipulation of deformable cables such as robot cable following. We are interested in continuing to investigate robotic manipulation of linear deformable objects such as cable routing/packing, electrical harness assembly, and shoelaces tying. In addition to the 1D deformable objects, we will investigate robotic manipulation of higher dimensional deformable objects such as 2D deformable objects (e.g., fabrics) and 3D deformable objects (e.g., fruits in grocery shopping and organs in surgery).

Representative Publications