Robotic Manipulation with a Human in the Loop - Accuracy Estimation of the Baxter Robot

This paper illustrates the design and implementation of a robotic software system based on robot-human interactions, which increases the applications of low-cost, inaccurate robots such as Baxter. The first four parts of the paper discuss the motivation, market & industry, IP strategy and system workflow. Then the paper explains a specific technical contribution of the project in detail – estimating Baxter’s positioning accuracy. Based on forward kinematics and Jacobian matrix respectively, two models are built to convert the error tolerance of the joints to the error tolerance of the end effector in the Cartesian space. The second model based on Jacobian matrix is chosen as the final approach since it has linear complexity and it is more computationally efficient. The result gives a reasonable estimation of Baxter’s accuracy, which allows valid comparison with the task’s accuracy requirements. Thus we are able to determine how the human can interact with the robot and improve its performance.