In this paper, we propose a metric called hitting flux which is used in the motion generation and controls for a robot manipulator to interact with the environment through a hitting or a striking motion. Given the task of placing a known object outside of the workspace of the robot, the robot needs to come in contact with it at a non zero relative speed. The configuration of the robot and the speed at contact matter because they affect the motion of the object. The physical quantity called hitting flux depends on the robot’s configuration, the robot speed and the properties of the environment. An approach to achieve the desired directional pre-impact flux for the robot through a combination of a dynamical system (DS) for motion generation and a control system that regulates the directional inertia of the robot is presented. Furthermore, a Quadratic Program (QP) formulation for achieving a desired inertia matrix at a desired position while following a motion plan constrained to the robot limits is presented. The system is tested for different scenarios in simulation showing the repeatability of the procedure and in real scenarios with KUKA LBR iiwa 7 robot.

PaintCopter is an autonomous unmanned aerial vehi-cle (UAV) capable of spray painting on complex three-dimensional (3D) surfaces. This letter aims to make PaintCopter more user-friendly and to enable more intuitive human–robot interaction. We propose a virtual reality interface that allows the user to immerse in a virtual environment, navigate around the target surface, and paint at desired locations using a virtual spray gun. A realistic paint simulator provides a real-time previsualization of the painting ac- tivity that can either be processed right away or stored to a disk for later execution. An efficient optimization based planner uses this information to plan the painting task and execute it. The proposed planner maximizes the paint quality while respecting the spray noz- zle constraints and platform dynamics. Our experiments show that the interface allows the user to make precise modifications to the target surface. Finally, we demonstrate the use of virtual reality interface to define a painting mission, and then the PaintCopter carrying out the mission to paint a desired multicolored pattern on a 3D surface.