Probabilistic Estimation of Whole Body Contacts for Multi-Contact Robot Control

Today most robots interact with the surroundings only with their end-effectors. However there are many benefits to utilizing contact along the entire length of robot body and links especially for human-like robots. Existing control strategies for link contact require knowledge of the contact point. In an uncertain environment, locating link contact point is difficult for most robots as they do not possess skin capable of sensing. We propose a probabilistic approach to link contact estimation based on geometric considerations and compliant motions. Since for many robots, link geometry is also uncertain, we broaden our approach to simultaneously estimate link shape and environment contact. Our experimental results demonstrate that efficiency of control is significantly improved by link contact estimation