Gestural Control of Robots

2014 – 2015, Kyoto University

Summary

• Initial research project at Kyoto University aimed at developing infrastructure to allow ergonomic control of robots using gestures.
• Designed and developed infrastructure that abstracted away the interface used by using an API, with a proof of concept using the Myo armband from Thalmic Labs to control robots.

My initial research topic was developing infrastructure which would allow the ergonomic control of robots using gestures.

My proof of concept was going to be using the Myo armband from Thalmic labs to control robots, either a Kinova robotic arm, or one of the lab’s other robots. Eventually, my professor determined that it was too much development, and not enough research, and I changed my thesis to SPIRIT. The source code is not publically available.

I designed and developed infrastructure which would allow gestural control of robots, while abstracting away the interface used by using an API. While I tested with the armband, the system also allowed control using e.g., computer vision from a webcam.

The most difficult part was figuring out good, intuitive mappings to use. I looked at ergonomics, as well as manually modifying the configurations, but the project was cancelled before a fully functional version could be made.

Most of the code was written in Python, including wrappers for C++ code which I wrote to talk to the armband and the robotic arm.