Towards multipurpose autonomous manipulation with the UJI service robot

This paper presents a modular control architecture that enables a mobile manipulator to compliantly perform manipulation tasks in partially-known everyday human environments. An impedance velocity/force controller that allows the execution of a great variety of tasks under the Task Frame Formalism (TFF) is implemented. Tasks are represented as a net of basic abilities which are performed by the robot using the impedance controller. Mechanisms for switching between abilities according to the robot’s perceptual state are defined. We show the validity of our approach on the UJI Service Robot, making it to perform a common daily task such as opening a door. Finally, we apply this framework to make progress on the new version of the UJI Librarian Robot, making a great step forward in the way the robot manipulates books.