Visual servoing for dual arm motions on a humanoid robot

Abstract

In this work we present a visual servoing approach that enables a humanoid robot to robustly execute dual arm grasping and manipulation tasks. Therefore the target object(s) and both hands are tracked alternately and a combined open-/ closed-loop controller is used for positioning the hands with respect to the target(s). We address the perception system and how the observable workspace can be increased by using an active vision system on a humanoid head. Furthermore a control framework for reactive positioning of both hands using position based visual servoing is presented, where the sensor data streams coming from the vision system, the joint encoders and the force/torque sensors are fused and joint velocity values are generated. This framework can be used for bimanual grasping as well as for two handed manipulations which is demonstrated with the humanoid robot Armar-III that executes grasping and manipulation tasks in a kitchen environment.