Abstract
This paper presents a method for a robot to handle tofu which is an example of non-rigid object to serve in a meal support system. The robot is equipped with a laser range finder (LRF) and a spoon holding manipulator. The LRF measures the 3D coordinates of surface points belonging to tofu on a plate. Then the system determines the position of tofu surface to scoop, and the manipulator moves according to the calculated trajectory. The system has an advantage that preparation of tofu cutting in bite-size is not needed. A preliminary experiment showed the effectiveness of the proposed method.
