In this Thesis, we have designed and constituted a wheelchair-mounted robot manipulator, called KARES(KAIST Rehabilitation Engineering System for the disabled). This system is realized to help the physically handicapped person in executing some daily work such as eating or grasping objects. The most important factors to consider the design are autonomy, safety and reliability. We have adopted a vision and a force sensor for sensing the environment and object.
For locationg an object in the distant place, we use vision. On the other hand for grasping, we suggest a new grasping algorithm using contact force with object. We determine contact state via force sensor and use contact state transition to recognize an object. The planned trajectory following depends on contact force and contact state. For safety, we also implemented a position-based compliance control method.
