DARPA Teams with Dirk to Develop Automatic Arms with Flexibility to Complicate Manpower

Fundamentally, robotics is about helping people. Robots help us make products, build things, and make our lives easier and more convenient. As robots become more complex and more capable, they are helping us in more direct ways in areas such as elderly care, rehabilitation centers and hospitals.

In the near future, the relationship between robots and humans will become even closer, and even neuro-mechanics will be able to restore the physical functions of people with disabilities. Armed soldiers will be the focus of this project.

In 2014, DARPA announced the hand proprioceptive and touch interface (HAPTIX) project, which aims to create a hand prosthetic system that allows prosthetics to act and feel like real hands.

Doug Weber, DARPAâ€™s HAPTIX project manager, said: "We believe that HAPTIX will create a rich and dynamic sensory experience. Users will want to wear the prosthesis and see it as a natural extension of the body. If we can To do this, DARPA has taken a step toward fulfilling its commitment to helping wounded soldiers recover their complete natural body functions."

The HAPTIX project consists of three distinct teams of hardware, user interface, and control algorithms. Its success depends on the optimal combination of the three. OSRF is proud to offer a customized version of the Gazebo simulator to the HAPTIX team, which makes the project's software experiments no longer constrained by the availability of hardware: essentially, this is the virtual place where software engineers work.

John Su, co-founder and chief scientist of OSRF, explained: â€œFor OSRF, HAPTIX's goal is to provide biomechanics engineers with a true prosthetic stimulation environment, which in turn will develop controllers for highly flexible advanced prosthetics.â€

Currently in the HAPTIX project, the high-level prosthetic arm used by DARPA is a complete arm control replacement system with a degree of freedom of 14 degrees for the DEK Luke automatic arm. However, the arm is currently controlled by a simple user interface designed for testing. HAPTIX hopes to design an interface that uses signals from the muscles and, at the same time, to transmit sensation feedback.

After investing 40 million U.S. dollars in research funds at DARPA and spending nearly 10 years, the Dick Auto Arm is a stunning hardware product, but this is only the initial stage. John Su said: "In my opinion, the hardware should be developed before the software. Although both can be designed at the same time, the iteration cycle of the hardware is longer. Once an excellent and stable hardware platform is developed, then it is handed over to The software team, they started to work quickly to develop the software, while doing their best not to destroy the hardware."

This illustrates two important reasons why a good simulation environment is extremely important:

First, it allows you to start developing software before the hardware is fully developed;

Second, to a certain extent, it can make software development isolated from the hardware itself. That is, when you only have one piece of hardware that may be very fragile, expensive, or unstable for some reason, many Engineers can still develop software at the same time.

For OSRF, developing and supporting a version of Gazebo for the HAPTIX project involves many different areas. In addition to the customized simulation environment, OSRF also provided the team with OptiTrack motion capture devices, NIVIDIA stereo glasses, 3D monitors, 3D joysticks, and the records needed to make it work flawlessly. The customized Gazebo also includes support for all types of remote hardware, and users can interact programmatically with analog systems using Microsoft and MATLAB.

HAPTIX developers can use these 3D sensors and remote sensing systems to translate arm and hand movements into a real environment, allowing them to perform common hand function tests both in real and virtual environments. It also provides amputees with a powerful and affordable way to learn how to use their new prosthetics to lay the foundation.

John Sue said that once the HAPTIX team receives the hands of Dirk, the work of OSRF becomes more important because they will have the opportunity to see how the simulated environment actually works and then optimize it to be as close as possible to the real environment. .

John Su said: â€œFor the verification part, I really look forward to it. For many simulation platforms, there is a lack of good validation data. When we were involved in the Gazebo challenge for the DARPA Robotics project, we did not have the same robots as ATLAS. Verification, so testing it is a big project."

Verification needs to ensure that the instructions sent to the Dirk's virtual arm are the same as those sent to the real Dirk's arm. John Su explains: â€œWe send instructions to real arms and virtual arms to see if they will behave differently. If the performance is different, we will update the model to make them match.â€ The closer the simulation, for HAPTIX, The more useful it is. Of course, the ultimate goal is to have all this work on real hardware, but an accurate and detailed simulator is crucial to the effective development of the software.

The first generation of Dirk Arms recently arrived at OSRF for validation testing and the complete hardware will be completed by the end of the year. OSRF recently released a series of stable versions of the HAPTIX simulator on a regular basis. As the arm's virtual positioning accuracy, power control and response, and other power systems will be validated in the coming months, OSRF will also upgrade the simulation software. Make sure the HAPTIX team has the tools needed to work quickly and effectively.

By the beginning of 2017, the first phase of HAPTIX will be completed. If it goes well, it will go on to the next phase. The ultimate goal is to implement a functional HAPTIX system. DARPA hopes that the actual experimentation of the system will be possible by 2019, and that any amputee can benefit from real limbs right after it.

Via robohub