Toward the Next Generation of Robotic Waiters

The gap between human waiters and state-of-the-art robot systems that try to serve something to drink is
often embarrassing, with the former able to manipulate glasses and trays or glasses on trays with incredible
dexterity and the latter that move at incredible slowness.
In this video, we want to show that robots can do it better by moving a bottle or a tankard full of beer that are
simply placed on a flat steel plate connected the flange of a robot manipulator.
The robot tracks the trajectory defined by a human operator that moves its hand in the 3D space, with a motion
capture system that acquires in real time the position. A feed-forward controller, placed between the user and the
robot and based on the combination of a smoother and proper orientation compensation, counteracts the lateral
accelerations and suppress sloshing phenomena of the liquids. Eventually a camera mounted on the robot arm
provides a visual feedback to the operator with monitoring purposes.
The challenge for the operator was to drop the carried object. will the feed-forward control be robust enough to
avoid this event, even at high speed? Watch the video and find out!