A method and system for capturing, by a camera a sequence of frames at respective locations within a portion of an environment; capturing, by an inertial measurement unit, a sequence of inertial odometry data corresponding to the sequence of frames at the respective locations; storing in a queue a data record includes information extracted from processing the respective frame and information from the inertial measurement unit; in accordance with a determination that the sequence of inertial odometry data satisfies a first criterion: calculating a first relative pose between the first frame and the second frame; and in accordance with a determination that a difference between the first relative pose and the information extracted from processing the respective frame satisfy a first threshold: generating an initial map of the portion of the environment based on the first data record and the second data record.

Provided is a robot control device capable of easily setting a robot operation speed which is safe for an operator. The robot control device is equipped with: a selection unit for selecting a location of a human body; an allowed speed storage unit for associating and storing the location of the human body and the allowed speed for the robot at said location; and a robot control unit for retrieving the allowed speed associated with the location selected by the selection unit from the allowed speed storage unit, and setting the smallest value for the retrieved allowed speed as the maximum speed for the robot.

A robot control system includes: a robot on which a camera and a hand for gripping a first workpiece are mounted; a displacement generation mechanism disposed between a tip of the robot and the camera; a first control module configured to provide the robot with a control instruction for causing the first workpiece to approach a second workpiece; a vibration calculation module configured to calculate magnitude of vibration caused in the camera when the robot causes the first workpiece to approach the second workpiece; and a second control module configured to provide the displacement generation mechanism with a control instruction for compensating for the vibration calculated by the vibration calculation module.

An apparatus and a method for planning contact-interaction trajectories are provided. The apparatus is a robot that accepts contact interactions between the robot and the environment. The robot stores a dynamic model representing geometric, dynamic, and frictional properties of the robot and the environment, and a relaxed contact model to representing dynamic interactions between the robot and the object via virtual forces. The robot further determines, iteratively until a termination condition is met, a trajectory, associated control commands for controlling the robot, and virtual stiffness values by performing optimization reducing stiffness of the virtual force and minimizing a difference between the target pose of the object and a final pose of the object moved from the initial pose. Further, an actuator moves a robot arm of the robot according to the trajectory and the associated control commands.

A system and method that automatically resolves conflicts among sensor information in a sensor fusion robot system. Such methods can accommodate converging ambiguous and divergent sensor information in a manner that can allow continued, and relatively accurate, robotic operations. The processes can include handling sensor conflict via sensor prioritization, including, but not limited, prioritization based on the particular stage or segment of the assembly operation when the conflict occurs, overriding sensor data that exceeds a threshold value, and/or prioritization based on evaluations of recent sensor performance, predictions, system configuration, and/or historical information. The processes can include responding to sensor conflicts through comparisons of the accuracy of workpiece location predictions from different sensors during different assembly stages in connection with arriving at a determination of which sensor(s) is providing accurate and reliable predictions.

An object can be moved via a robotic system with a combination of force and position control. The control system can include the object to be moved, the robotic system that moves the object, at least one force sensor, at least one position sensor, and a controller. A position control output, a force control output, and a hybrid weighting value can each be determined by the controller based on sensor data and then combined to determine an amount of position control and/or force control to be applied to move the object and/or modify an object in motion's trajectory.

The invention provides a robot system that enables easy, efficient, and precise checking through simulation. The invention includes a virtual model display unit configured to place virtual models in a virtual space on a screen and display the virtual models simultaneously with real equipment; a robot program teaching unit configured to perform teaching of a robot program in the virtual space; a real space virtual model display unit configured to display the virtual models and teaching points of the robot program in a real space, based on a positional relationship in the virtual space; and a virtual model placement position correcting unit configured to correct placement positions of the virtual models to match the real equipment in the real space.

A robot control method for controlling a robot including a robot arm that performs predetermined work on a work target object, the robot control method including a target-position setting step for setting, on simple shape data predicted from a plurality of projection shapes obtained by projecting the work target object from different directions, a plurality of target positions to which a control point of the robot arm in performing the predetermined work is moved and a driving step for driving the robot arm with force control based on the plurality of target positions set in the target-position setting step and force applied to the robot arm and performing the predetermined work.

A computing system and method for estimating friction and/or center of mass (CoM) are presented. The system may perform the method by selecting at least one of: (i) a first joint from among a plurality of joints, or (ii) a first arm segment from among a plurality of arm segments. The computing system further outputs a set of one or more movement commands for causing robot arm movement that includes relative movement between the first arm segment and a second arm segment via the first joint, and receiving a set of actuation data and a set of movement data associated with the first joint or the first arm segment. The computing system further determines, based on the set of actuation data and the set of movement data, at least one of: (i) a friction parameter estimate or (ii) a CoM estimate.

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for computing interpolated robot control parameters. One of the methods includes receiving, by a real-time bridge from a control agent for a robot, a non-real-time command for the robot, wherein the non-real-time command specifies a trajectory to be attained by a component of the robot and a target value for a control parameter, wherein the control parameter controls how a real-time controller will cause the robot to react to one or more external stimuli encountered during a control cycle of the real-time controller. The real-time bridge provides the one or more real-time commands translated from the non-real-time command and interpolated control parameter information to the real-time controller, thereby causing the robot to effectuate the trajectory of the non-real-time command according to the interpolated control parameter information.