Trainable Craft Robotics
Intelligent Surface Treatment 

Much like robotic grasping, robotic sanding can be effectively approached as a motion generation problem using environmental constraint exploitation (ECE) principles. This approach leverages task-specific knowledge and geometrical structure as constraints to streamline the motion planning and execution processes. Since humans use their environment as ECE naturally, robots can learn from human demonstrations to acquire nuanced, task-specific skills that are crucial for the effective execution of sanding tasks, ensuring precision and consistency. An ECE-based approach simplifies the representation of the problem space, reducing computational complexity and enhancing the robot's adaptability to varying surfaces and conditions, similar to the way I used ECE for motion planning and grasping from piles and former colleagues from the RBO Lab used it for grasping and in-hand manipulation. 

Furthermore, an environmental constraint-based approach to robotic sanding allows for the integration of safety and efficiency considerations directly into the motion planning process. By embedding constraints such as surface contours, desired pressure, and motion paths, robots can ensure optimal contact with the work surface, minimizing the risk of damage and maximizing the quality of the sanding job. 

See what we reached halfway through the Lerosh project, where I applied ECE to a practical problem. Stay tuned for more updates on how ECEs support robotic sanding.