Hardware overview

This list is far from complete but provides an idea about the type of hardware we have in the lab.

You can download a zip-file with high resolution versions of the images below here. If you click on an image below you get to the high resolution version of it as well.

Manipulator

We study manipulation, grasping and learning from humans with the setup below. It consists of a manipulator arm equipped with a dexterous three-fingered hand and and a camera head with four cameras. Two of the cameras have a wide field of view and gives the periferal vision and two of the cameras provide high resolution in a smaller field of view. In addition to this there are a number of cameras and other sensor mounted around the setup.

Additional manipulators

We have several other manipulators in the lab including these two.

The larger of these (the one on the right) is very fast and has been used in experiments with automatically catching balls. For more detailed information about the ball catching setup, have a look here

Grasping

In order to grasp objects the robot needs a hand. These hands are often mechanically very complicated and typically a bit bigger than a human hand (right image below). On the left below is our first three-fingered hand equipped with a number of extra sensors to be able to "feel" the object that it touches and grasps. The hand on the right has most of these sensors integrated into the fingers.

Mobile robots

Another large part of what we do has to do with mobile service robots. These robots are envisioned to help us in domestic and office environments in the future to carry out fetch and carry task, remind us about appointments or to take our medicine, etc. These robots use a number of different sensors to determine where the are, what the environment looks like, where it is safe to move, where people are, etc.

Mobile manipulation

An areas which we have done quite a lot of work in over the years as well is mobile manipulation. Most mobile robots do not have the ability to interact physically with the environment as they lack an arm. Most robots with the ability to manipulate the world lack the ability to move. In mobile manipulation the manipulator is on wheels, ie a mobile robot with one or more arms. The images below shows some of our robots for mobile manipulation. The image below to the right illustrates rougly what our next robot in this category will look like, with two arms.