Identification of Contact Conditions by Active Force Sensing - Estimated Parameter Uncertainty and Experimental Verification -

Accomplishing assembly tasks using robots requires that contact conditions between grasped objects and environments be identified and controlled during task execution. We propose estimated parameter uncertainty of contact location and direction, discussing four contact types – point, soft-finger, line, and planar contact. We formulate a least-squares function (i.e., performance index) including contact location and direction. The uncertainty of estimates is derived using the rest error of minimized index. The effectiveness of our proposed method is demonstrated through experiments.