Abstract

Object manipulation encompasses a large variety of research activities, from grasping to fine manipulation. During the past decade, the interests in robot object manipulation have developed, from basic researches broad industry profiles, from physics-based modeling to sensor-based learning, from stand-alone robot applications to human robot collaboration. The driving force behind this shift is the vision that many practical robot applications, such as assembly, including inevitable modeling uncertainties, which require the use of sensor-based approaches to design reactive skills for robots. Moreover, these tasks are still difficult to be accomplished with robots alone, and need combination of the flexibility of human workers and the productivity of robots. In order to improve the collaborative assembly capabilities and efficiency, we need to answer following questions.

1) What kind of control strategies and end-effectors are needed in robot assembly tasks? How can we achieve and improve it?

2) How to model the cooperation between human and robots so that the assembly task can be implemented in an optimal way?

3) How to represent the collaborative assembly tasks in order to leverage the power of learning to design efficient controllers?

The aim is to bring researchers from both industry and academia to set the basis and define core open problems for collaborative assembly, such as planning, control, learning, design and perception. This workshop will also discuss advantages, limitations, challenges and progress with different approaches along these lines.

The workshop topics include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Task planning for collaborative assembly
• Robots’ hardware optimization for collaborative application
• Control strategy for object manipulation/ collaborative assembly
• Learning the object manipulation skill from human demonstration
• Improving the object manipulation skill by exploration learning
• Integrate haptic perception and vision for collaborative assembly
• In-hand object manipulation
• Sensor fusion based on tactile, force and vision feedback

Invited Speakers

1. Alberto Rodriguez, MIT (Confirmed, Academia)

2. Yu Sun, University of South Florida (Confirmed, Academia)

3. Kensuke Harada, AIST (Confirmed, Academia)

4. Kenji Tahara, Kyushu University (Confirmed, Academia)

5. Sergey Levine, UC Berkeley (Confirmed, Academia)

6. Sami Haddadin, Franka Robotics, (Confirmed, Industrial)

7. Hao Ding, ABB (Confirmed, Industrial)

8. Zhaopeng Chen, DLR (Confirmed, Industrial)

9. Sebastian Hoepfl, Schunk (Confirmed, Industrial)

10. Vincent Duchaine, co-founder of Robotiq (Confirmed, Industrial)

Program/Schedule (A: Academia, I: Industry)

• 8:30-8:40 Opening
• 8:40-9:10 Alberto Rodriguez, MIT, A
• 9:10-9:40 Sami Haddadin, Franka Robotics, I
• 9:40-10:10 Poster Highlights (8 posters, 3 minutes each presentation)
• 10:10-10:40 Coffee Break and Poster Sessions
• 10:40-11:10 Yu Sun, University of South Florida, A
• 11:10-11:40 Hao Ding, ABB, I
• 11:40-12:10 Kensuke Harada, AIST, A
• 12:10-13:30 Lunch Break
• 13:30-14:0 Zhaopeng Chen, DLR, I
• 14:00-14:30 Kenji Tahara, Kyushu University, A
• 14:30-15:00 Coffee Break
• 15:00-15:30 Sebastian Hoepfl, Schunk, I
• 15:30-16:00 Sergey Levine, UC Berkeley, A
• 16:00-16:30 Vincent Duchaine, co-founder of Robotiq, I
• 16:45-17:45 Panel Discussion

Call for Submissions

Prospective participants are required to submit an extended abstract (maximum 2 pages in length), but videos are also welcome! All submissions will be reviewed using a single-blind review process. Accepted contributions will be presented during the workshop as posters. Submissions must be sent in pdf, following the IEEE conference style (two-columns), to limiao712@gmail.com , or one of the organizers, indicating [ICRA 2017 Workshop] in the e-mail subject.

Important Date

Paper Submission Deadline: April 30th, 2017

Notification of acceptance: May 10th, 2017

Workshop day: May 29th, 2017