Robotic pitching by rolling ball on fingers for a randomly located target

Abstract

This study considers a robotic pitching task with the goal of implementing dynamic manipulation. The strategy used to control the pitching direction of the ball is based on human pitching action, and involves rolling the fingers on the ball at release. The effect of varying the time of release in the pitching direction is analyzed based on ball dynamics. Experiments to test the proposed method featured a high-speed manipulator, composed of a robotic arm with four degrees of freedom (DoFs) and a hand with 10 DoFs, throwing a ball toward a randomly located target recognized by using high-speed vision.