Stabilization of moved objects for tele-operated robots

In this paper a tele-operated robot system is presented for transporting and stabilizing a ball rolling on a tray. A ball on a tray is a very sensitive system. Therefore it can be used to make lateral forces visible. In our experimental setup a round tray of 25 cm in diameter is attached to the end effector of an industrial robot manipulator. A small ball is placed on the tray. The position of the rolling ball is observed by an USB camera which is attached to the end effector of the robot above the tray, moving with the end effector. The result of the presented research is a controllable transport of the tray as a tele-operated system in all three dimensions. Lateral forces are smoothed by convenient adaption of the orientation and movement of the end effector. The mathematical model of the controller is based on Lagrangian mechanics. The input of the controller is the current position of the ball on the tray observed by the camera and the current configuration of the kinematic chain of the robot manipulator. The idea behind this experiment is to use a small sphere as a sensor to minimize lateral forces while transporting sensitive goods.