Speaker:Yuechuan Xue

Dexterous Manipulation: Gripping a Kitchen Knife on the Table

Despite more than three decades of robotic manipulation research, many tools in our everyday life still pose a serious challenge for a robotic hand to grip. The level of dexterity for such a maneuver is surprisingly "high" that its execution may require a combination of finger movements and robust controls. In this talk, I will first discuss how to pick up and firmly hold a kitchen knife initially resting on the table with an anthropomorphic hand. More specifically, I will explain how to lift up the knife's handle with two fingers by exploiting the table support and achieve the final power grasp by moving the fingers alternately. One remaining problem is that the finger movements are pre-designated by the human rather than automatically planned. In the second part, the talk will focus on my current work: a three-level hierarchical framework for automatic finger movement motion planning.

Bio

Yuechuan Xue is a doctoral student in the ISU’s Department of Computer Science working with Prof. Yan-Bin Jia. He received his bachelor's degree in Modern Physics in 2016 from the University of Science and Technology of China. His research interests are in dexterous robotic manipulation, motion control, and planning.