Kinematic Analysis and Integration of Vision Algorithms for a Mobile Manipulator Employed Inside a Self-Driving Laboratory

TL;DR

This paper develops a mobile manipulator with advanced vision algorithms for precise, adaptive handling of textured objects in autonomous laboratory environments, enhancing scalability and human-robot collaboration.

Contribution

It introduces a kinematic model and vision-based object detection method for reliable autonomous manipulation in self-driving laboratories.

Findings

Successful integration of vision algorithms for real-time object detection.

Enhanced grasping accuracy on textured objects.

Robust autonomous manipulation demonstrated in lab scenarios.

Abstract

Recent advances in robotics and autonomous systems have broadened the use of robots in laboratory settings, including automated synthesis, scalable reaction workflows, and collaborative tasks in self-driving laboratories (SDLs). This paper presents a comprehensive development of a mobile manipulator designed to assist human operators in such autonomous lab environments. Kinematic modeling of the manipulator is carried out based on the Denavit Hartenberg (DH) convention and inverse kinematics solution is determined to enable precise and adaptive manipulation capabilities. A key focus of this research is enhancing the manipulator ability to reliably grasp textured objects as a critical component of autonomous handling tasks. Advanced vision-based algorithms are implemented to perform real-time object detection and pose estimation, guiding the manipulator in dynamic grasping and following tasks. In this work, we integrate a vision method that combines feature-based detection with homography-driven pose estimation, leveraging depth information to represent an object pose as a $2$D planar projection within $3$D space. This adaptive capability enables the system to accommodate variations in object orientation and supports robust autonomous manipulation across diverse environments. By enabling autonomous experimentation and human-robot collaboration, this work contributes to the scalability and reproducibility of next-generation chemical laboratories