| D3SPA |
 This project has been developed in collaboration with colleagues from D3 (Drug Discovery and Development).Its aim is the manipulation of laboratory instrumentation (patent pending). The harware is a 6 DOF COMAU robotic arm equipped with a 3+3 Channels Force/Torque sensor and a custom gripper. The end-effector has 7 additional DOF and 6 pressure transducer matrices with 64 texel each, allowing a tactile feedback on over 255 levels of pressure. We also designed a custom quick re-tooling system that allows us to use the arm for a wide range of research experiments also involving human perception and human machines interaction. The software designed for this application consists of a strictly real-time Linux controller taking care of the communication with the arm. Additional modules have been developed to handle high level tasks such as inverse kinematics module, 3D graphical control application and basic grasping techniques using tactile feedback. The modularity of the control software can match different hardware configuration. This makes the D3SPA an immediately available research tool for a wide range of experiments. |