Using visual and force information in robot-robot cooperation to build metallic structures

In this paper, a cooperative robot-robot approach to construct metallic structures is presented. In order to develop this task, a visual-force control system is proposed. The visual information is composed of an eye-in-hand camera, and a time of flight 3D camera. Both robots are equipped by a force sensor at the end-effector. In order to allow a human cooperate with both robots, an inertial motion capture system and an indoor localization system are employed. This multisensorial approach allows the robots to cooperatively construct the metallic structure in a flexible way and sharing the workspace with a human operator.This work was funded by the Spanish MEC project “Design, Implementation and Experimentation of Intelligent Manipulation Scenarios for Automatic Assembly and Disassembly Applications (DPI2005-06222)”and the FPU grant AP2005-1458