Roomba with Non-Prehensile Object Grasping

Posted 24 Jul 2009 at 22:00 UTC (updated 24 Jul 2009 at 22:09 UTC) by steve

That's a fancy way of saying this Roomba can pick things up from the floor and hand them to humans. This is not just a simple hack either but very nicely designed end-effector documented in great detail in the paper, "1000 Trials: An Empirically Validated End Effector that Robustly Grasps Objects from the Floor" (PDF format). The Roomba Dustpan End-Effector project was done at Georgia Tech's Healthcare Robotics Lab as a proof-of-concept for the idea of a semi-autonomous assistive robot for home use by motor-impaired users. A future model is planned that will include a scissor-lift to elevate objects after they are grasped. Thanks to Robots.net reader Travis Deyle for tipping us off to this project.