Building a Universal Planar Manipulator

Distributed manipulation devices make use of a large number of actuators, organized in array fashion, to manipulate a small number of parts. Inspired by minimalism we look at a complementary question: can a device with few degrees of actuation freedom be used to flexibly manipulate a large number of parts? In previous publications we have shown that a single horizontally-vibrating plate is just such a device. This suggests that actuator count can be traded for control complexity. In this paper we review our theory of minimalist manipulation and describe implementation solutions towards a working prototype.

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