Page 8 - Human Inspired Dexterity in Robotic Manipulation

2 Human Inspired Dexterity in Robotic Manipulation

Human functions: The level of dexterous manipulation by robots is cur-
rently far from that of human beings. What can improve the ability of
robots? One hint might be to understand the approach that human beings
take in dexterity acquisition. For example, suppose there is a task of grasping
and manipulating an unknown object. The shape, softness, weight, and
gravitational center are unknown parameters of the presented object.
How do human beings identify the physical parameters and use the identi-
fied parameters to complete dexterous manipulation? How do human beings
learn such procedures? The methodology for the identifying and learning
process of human beings could provide valuable insights for the construction
of dexterous manipulation of robots. The structure of the human finger and
hand play an important role for dexterous manipulation. It was acquired in
the process of evolution. The key structures for dexterity are also valid for
the key structures of robotic hand design.
Method for transferring human functions to robotic manipulation: It is basically
difficult to transfer human manipulation techniques or functions to robotic
manipulation, because of the different structures and system architectures.
One approach might be imitating or embedding key function/components
in robots one by one. Recent attempts to transfer the techniques or functions
could give us deep insights in realizing dexterous manipulation of robots.
Such attempts could proceed to creating new strategies to design, control,
and plan for robotic manipulations, although the functions do not perfectly
coincide with the ones for human beings.
This text will consolidate recent approaches from both viewpoints in
accelerating the next developments in the dexterous manipulation of robots.
To facilitate this understanding, there are two separate sections correspond-
ing to the two viewpoints. The first section focuses on human functions
while the second section focuses on transferring the functions to robots.
Chapter 2 provides recent revelations in hand anatomy, which lead to
human functions for dexterous manipulation. Newly discovered functions
give us new viewpoints for constructing robotic manipulation. The concept
of muscle synergy has been utilized for controlling robotic hands, but the
synergy does not always correspond to that for human or animal evolution.
Chapter 3 presents how human beings learn dexterous manipulation in
the context of sensorimotor functions. The actual functions of human
beings give us different insights to understand dexterous manipulation.
Chapter 4 presents a trail of excitation of a multisensory illusion of a surgical
robotic system to enhance the dexterity of the control of surgical robotic
systems. A hint of the embedded features of human behaviors in the system