Cooperative manipulation testbed for highly constrained, enclosed environments

This paper describes the initial stages of development of a testbed for cooperative manipulation for dual-arm robots working in confined environments. Such environments exist in semiconductor manufacturing and glovebox processes in which the objective is to isolate machinery and processes from humans. In the former, the objective is to keep human contamination out for product integrity. While in the latter, depending on the application, the objective often is to keep hazardous process materials confined in order to minimize risk to humans. In either case, it is desirable to achieve anthropomorphic maneuvering similar to human scale and dexterity in using two manipulators to perform cooperative manipulation tasks otherwise performed by humans using protective handing gear and/or uniforms.