KUKA Innovation Award 2015: retrospective report

An Italian research team managed to convince the international jury, leave 20 competitors in its wake and advance important innovations in the field of human-robot collaboration. Researchers from the Biorobotics Institute of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna took home the KUKA Innovation Award 2015 with their application ReTeLINK (Reciprocal Teleoperation of the LBR iiwa and an Interactive Exoskeleton). 

The “ReTeLINK” is an application which involves establishing a data link between two compliant robot arms: the KUKA LBR iiwa robot arm and a newly developed upper-limb exoskeleton (shoulder-elbow). With the application, the human moves the lightweight robot like his own arm, using the sensorized exoskeleton capable of detecting the shoulder and elbow joint angles. The exoskeleton’s motors provide force feedback of the interaction of the LBR iiwa with its environment. This can be applied to applications in telepresence and rehabilitation treatment.

During the competition for the Innovation Award 2015, the winning team created a way to tele-operate a robot that is improved, more natural and more intuitive. “ReTeLINK” does what conventional haptic devices achieve through virtual reality. However, the application also connects two real physical systems with their own inertia, compliance and impedance. As a result, both robots (the exoskeleton and the LBR iiwa) use compliance features inspired by nature for safe interaction with an unstructured environment. 

The two robots can even trade roles – for example, in order for a person to be entrusted with control of the LBR iiwa. This enables a remote object wearing the exoskeleton to initiate movements. This innovative form of human-robot collaboration offers enormous potential for clinical tele-rehabilitation. Beyond this, ReTeLINK is an interesting tool for advanced neuro-biomechanical studies in the field of human motor sensory systems.

During the KUKA Innovation Award 2015 competition, many other interesting projects dealing with human-robot collaboration and the LBR iiwa were also presented. Besides the winning team, the following projects were also in the running:

• APPLE (Autonomous Picking and Palletizing): The project provides solutions in the field of logistics. Here, a mobile manipulation system was developed to enable the LBR iiwa to navigate independently as well as to pick objects up and set them down. The project team comes from the Center for Applied Autonomous Sensor Systems (AASS) of Örebro University in Sweden.
• CATCH (Compliant Articulated Robot Catching): The project enables the KUKA LBR iiwa to gently catch flying objects of uneven shape. This is made possible through a compliance controller and a two-phase process. The project was carried out by a research team from the “Learning Algorithms and System Laboratory (LASA)” department of the EPFL Lausanne.
• ROBOCUT (Robots Decrypt the Human History): The project is used for experimental archaeology. The KUKA LBR iiwa is thus able to analyze Stone Age tools and research their prehistoric use. The team comes from the Archaeological Research Center and Museum in Neuwied as well as the Agile and Dexterous Robotics Lab (ADRL) at ETH Zurich.