Real World Clicker Operation Method with a Smartphone

—Two-step Strategy from Coarse to Fine Tuning Which Is Optimized Based on a Robot Manipulability—

Abstract

We propose smartphone-based operation methods for our conventionally developed “Real World Clicker” (RWC), which is a 3D coordinate measuring device with a TOF-type laser sensor mounted on a pan-tilt actuator. The laser spot coordinate on a target object's surface can be measured with RWC then a support robot can grasp and convey the object to user. Conventionally, RWC has been operated by a PC mouse, but in this paper we attempt to replace this with a smartphone. Specifically, three methods are proposed: (1) a method in which the RWC angle is linked to the posture of the smartphone housing, (2) two-step strategy from coarse to fine tuning that improves on (1), (3) a method in which the sensitivity of the fine tuning operation is optimized based on a robot manipulability. We conduct demonstration experiments to compare the pointing performance of these three methods and conclude that the lastly proposed optimization method based on manipulability has the highest performance.