A mobile robot system and method for determining the stiffness of a human arm while moving with a user during overground interaction as the user holds the robot's handle and exchanges forces with it. A mobile base moves with the user, a robot arm interacts with the user, and a controller determines the stiffness. The robot arm includes servomotors driving a linkage mechanism, an end effector including the handle supported by the linkage mechanism, and a force transducer measuring a force applied by the user to the handle. The controller causes the robot arm to generate a force perturbation at the handle, measure a peak velocity achieved by the human arm, determine the stiffness of the human arm as a function of force and displacement, and control operation of the system based on the determined stiffness. A robot body may allow for adjusting the height of the robot arm.

A UV based surface disinfection system that consists of the UV light source, a robot arm, and an omni directional mobile base. The mobile robot can be programmed autonomously and be able to bring the UV light source to the centimeters away from surfaces to achieve effective and efficient surface disinfection. The mobile robot can navigate autonomously in a complicated environment to perform disinfection operation in a large area.

A method of adjusting an action parameter includes a positional posture determination step of making a robot execute a task a plurality of times in a plurality of positional postures different in positional posture of an object when starting the task to obtain evaluation values of the respective tasks, comparing the evaluation values of the tasks out of the evaluation values of the respective tasks with a reference evaluation value, and determining an evaluation positional posture from the positional postures in the tasks in which the evaluation value is no higher than the reference evaluation value, an updating step of making the robot operate with a tentative action parameter using the evaluation positional posture as a starting positional posture in the task to measure a time taken for the task or a vibration of the robot, and updating the tentative action parameter based on a measurement result, and a determination step of repeatedly performing the updating step until the time taken for the task or the vibration of the robot measured is converged to determine latest one of the tentative action parameters as an action parameter when actually performing the task.

Robotic surgery systems and methods of surgical robot operation are provided. A method of surgical robot operation includes moving a surgical instrument through a tissue using the surgical robot, where the surgical robot attempts to move the surgical instrument to a desired position. The method further includes measuring an actual position of the surgical instrument, and calculating a difference between the actual position and the desired position. The actual position of the surgical instrument is adjusted to the desired position using the surgical robot.

In an embodiment, a method during execution of a motion plan by a robotic arm includes determining a voice command from speech of a user said during the execution of the motion plan, determining a modification of the motion plan based on the voice command from the speech of the user, and executing the modification of the motion plan by the robotic arm.

A robot may include a spatiotemporal controller for controlling the kinematics or movements of the robot via continuous and/or granular adjustments to the actuators that perform the physical operations of the robot. The spatiotemporal controller may continuously and/or granularly adjust the actuators to align completion or execution of different objectives or waypoints from a spatiotemporal plan within time intervals allotted for each objective by the spatiotemporal plan. The spatiotemporal controller may also continuously and/or granularly adjust the actuators to workaround unexpected conflicts that may arise during the execution of an objective and delays that result from a workaround while still completing the objective within the allotted time interval. By completing objectives within the allotted time intervals, the spatiotemporal controller may ensure that conflicts do not arise as the robots simultaneously operate in the site using some of the same shared resource.

This disclosure relates to a technology for grasping an object while adjusting a grasping force according to stiffness of the object measured by a tactile sensor module, especially to a robot-hand, which includes a tactile sensor module for measuring a normal force applied when grasping an object, a phalange sensor module having an actuator to generate a driving force and configured to measure a rotational displacement of a motor, and a hand back control unit for operating the actuator by generating a desired displacement signal to control a grasping force so that a grasping motion is stably and accurately achieved by applying a minimum grasping force to soft object with no sliding and minimized deformation, wherein the desired displacement signal is generated based on stiffness which is calculated from the normal force data and the rotational displacement data.

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for using a demonstration device for robotic demonstration learning. One of the methods includes generating, by a demonstration device for a robot, a representation of a sequence of states input by a user of the demonstration device. The representation is provided by the demonstration device to a robot execution system. The representation of the sequence of actions is translated into a plurality of robot commands corresponding to the representation of the sequence of states input by the user on the demonstration device. The plurality of robot commands corresponding to the sequence of actions input by the user on the demonstration device are executed. Demonstration data is generated from one or more sensor streams of the robot while executing the plurality of robot commands corresponding to the sequence of actions input by the user on the demonstration device.

A system and computerized method for detection of engagement of a surgical tool to a tool drive of a robotic arm of a surgical robotic system. The method may include activating an actuator of the tool drive to rotate a drive disk to be mechanically engaged with a tool disk in the surgical tool. One or more motor operating parameters of the actuator that is causing the rotation of the drive disk are monitored while activating the actuator. The method detects when the drive disk becomes mechanically engaged with the tool disk, based on the one or more monitored motor operating parameters. Other embodiments are also described and claimed.

Certain examples described herein provide a method of controlling a robotic device including a body, an end effector coupled to the body by one or more joints and a propulsion system to drive the one or more joints to control a state of the robotic device. Example methods include applying impedance control to the robotic device; determining a reference trajectory of the end effector; detecting an applied external force and/or torque acting on the robotic device causing a departure from the reference trajectory; calculating an adjustment to be applied to one or more of the one or more joints to compensate for the detected applied external force and/or torque; and using the calculated adjustment to control the one or more joints to actuate the end effector and recover the reference trajectory of the end effector.