Team Northeastern's Approach to ANA XPRIZE Avatar Final Testing: A Holistic Approach to Telepresence and Lessons Learned

This paper reports on Team Northeastern's Avatar system for telepresence, and our holistic approach to meet the ANA Avatar XPRIZE Final testing task requirements. The system features a dual-arm configuration with hydraulically actuated glove-gripper pair for haptic force feedback. Our proposed Avatar system was evaluated in the ANA Avatar XPRIZE Finals and completed all 10 tasks, scored 14.5 points out of 15.0, and received the 3rd Place Award. We provide the details of improvements over our first generation Avatar, covering manipulation, perception, locomotion, power, network, and controller design. We also extensively discuss the major lessons learned during our participation in the competition.

Series Elastic Force Control for Soft Robotic Fluid Actuators

Fluid-based soft actuators are an attractive option for lightweight and human-safe robots. These actuators, combined with fluid pressure force feedback, are in principle a form of series-elastic actuation (SEA), in which nearly all driving-point (e.g. motor/gearbox) friction can be eliminated. Fiber-elastomer soft actuators offer unique low-friction and low-hysteresis mechanical properties which are particularly suited to force-control based on internal pressure force feedback, rather than traditional external force feedback using force/tactile sensing, since discontinuous (Coulomb) endpoint friction is unobservable to internal fluid pressure. However, compensation of endpoint smooth hysteresis through a model-based feedforward term is possible. We report on internal-pressure force feedback through a disturbance observer (DOB) and model-based feedforward compensation of endpoint friction and nonlinear hysteresis for a 2-DOF lightweight robotic gripper driven by rolling-diaphragm linear actuators coupled to direct-drive brushless motors, achieving an active low-frequency endpoint impedance range ("Z-width") of 50dB.