The proximity sensors, based on Time-of-Flight technology, have been integrated into REMODEL fingers and used to implement scanning strategies for thin wires.
The video shows an application of the proximity sensor to locate a wire and to estimate its shape. First, the region where the wire is placed is scanned to generate the corresponding point cloud from the sensor measurements. After the scan, the obtained point cloud is processed segment by segment to locate the points with the maximum z-coordinate, which correspond to points of the wire. Then, the x and y coordinates of the selected points are used to obtain a third order polynomial approximating the wire shape by means of a least squares method. Finally, the shape approximation is used to compute the trajectory for the robot end effector in order to follow the real wire for all its length.
Written by UCLV