Design and control of an intelligent dual-arm manipulator for fault-recovery in a production scenario

This paper describes the design and control methodology used for the development of a dual-arm manipulator as well as its deployment in a production scenario. Multi-modal and sensor-based manipulation strategies are used to guide the robot on its task to supervise and, when necessary, solve faulty situations in a production line. For that task the robot is equipped with two arms, aimed at providing the robot with total independence from the production line. In other words, no extra mechanical stoppers are mounted on the line to halt targeted objects, but the robot will employ both arms to (a) stop with one arm a carrier that holds an object to be inserted/replaced, and (b) use the second arm to handle such object. Besides, visual information from head and wrist-mounted cameras provide the robot with information such as the state of the production line, the unequivocal detection/recognition of the targeted objects, and the location of the target in order to guide the grasp.