SUTURO

Project SUTURO is all about programming an industry standard robot and modelling its behaviour. The goal of the project is to fulfill a certain set of goals with the robot that can have a real life application.

Development is done on the Human Support Robot (HSR) of the Toyota Motor Corporation. The HSR is a single-arm, lightweight, multifunction robot that was developed to support humans in day to day activities especially household tasks. The HSR can perform a multitude of taks such as picking up objects or opening curtains. It is even possible to recognize and open doors. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic the development was mainly done in a simulator called “Gazebo”.

The two scenarios that are to be solved this year are called “Cleanup” and “Wipe”. In the scenario “Cleanup” the robot finds itself in an uncleaned room. All objects that are laying around are supposed to be picked up by the HSR and placed into a bin in the corner. Most objects need to be picked up from tables. The task in “Wipe” is to clean a table after removing all objects from its surface and then subsequently placing all objects onto the table again. The SUTURO project is iterative in nature. Every group works with the code from the previous group and tries to expand on that codebase to add new behaviours or features. Since we are dealing with a highly complex system, development is split into four seperate groups that all deal with different areas of the robot.

-Perception: Perception uses the sensors and cameras to let the HSR recognize objects.

-Manipulation: Manipulation is responsible for the correct execution of actions such as opening a door or movement.

-Knowledge: Knowledge is the information centre of the robot. All information is stored and relayed here.

-Planning: Planning is the core component of the system. All other components are brought together to achieve the desired behaviour.