The glovebox project started the 1st of August 2021 and lasted one year. During this year we developped a demonstrator for a robot assisted glovebox.

Live demonstration

Here is a video of the demonstrator in action. The robot realises three tasks:

• Bring unreachable tools/vials
• Serve as a 3rd arm to hold tools/vials
• Bring preparation to some device

All this work is done using the softwares developped at Auctus, namely :

• panda_qp_control with velocity_qp
• moveit_trajectory_interface
• voice_recognition

Simulation

The demonstrator is also working in simulation with gazebo. The physics of the experiment is respected and the tray can be grabed and moved around.

In the following video, we also simulated different robot inside a glovebox available on the market. We first insert a panda robot inside the glovebox. It can be seen that the robot is too big for a standard glovebox. Secondly, we test it with a UR3 robot. While the robot fits inside the glovebox, its range of motion is too small to reach the whole workspace inside the glovebox. The last simulation add a rail on the roof of the glovebox. It is then possible for the robot to go anywhere inside the glovebox workspace

Finally we can also simulate the presence of RGBD cameras inside the glovebox. This video shows that the simulation also displays data from the camera. Depth points and camera stream are displayed and synchronised with the robot motion.

For more information on the project you can go to the project page