A Robot Kinematics Model Estimation Using Inertial Sensors for On-Site Building Robotics

TL;DR

This paper introduces a portable on-site robotics approach that estimates robot kinematics using inertial sensors, enabling quick reassembly and accurate target reaching despite link configuration changes.

Contribution

It presents a novel method for estimating robot kinematic models with IMUs, facilitating portable, reconfigurable robots for on-site deployment.

Findings

Robot can reach target after reassembly

Kinematic model estimation is accurate with IMUs

Method enables portable and reconfigurable robots

Abstract

In order to make robots more useful in a variety of environments, they need to be highly portable so that they can be transported to wherever they are needed, and highly storable so that they can be stored when not in use. We propose "on-site robotics", which uses parts procured at the location where the robot will be active, and propose a new solution to the problem of portability and storability. In this paper, as a proof of concept for on-site robotics, we describe a method for estimating the kinematic model of a robot by using inertial measurement units (IMU) sensor module on rigid links, estimating the relative orientation between modules from angular velocity, and estimating the relative position from the measurement of centrifugal force. At the end of this paper, as an evaluation for this method, we present an experiment in which a robot made up of wooden sticks reaches a target position. In this experiment, even if the combination of the links is changed, the robot is able to reach the target position again immediately after estimation, showing that it can operate even after being reassembled. Our implementation is available on https://github.com/hiroya1224/urdf_estimation_with_imus .