Towards an automatic robot regrasping movement based on human demonstration using tangle topology

This paper introduces a novel method to teach a robot to regrasp an object based on the Programming by Demonstration paradigm. In this paradigm, a robot observes a human performing a regrasping task via various sensors to recognise crucial information in order to reproduce the task using its own hand. The main contribution is in the proposal of a representation technique that can analyse a human regrasping movement and reproduce this movement in a robot hand. The technique is based on tangle topology where both hand and manipulated object are considered as strands. This allows a regrasping movement to be considered as an alteration of the tangle relationship between the strands (hand and the object) over time. Human regrasping movements are analysed and reproduced in multi-fingered robot hands in a grasp simulation to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method.