Abstract
Many manipulation tasks require carefully controlled contact forces for successful execution, yet large-scale, force-aware datasets remain scarce. Handheld interfaces can help by transmitting interaction forces directly through the operator's arm, but most existing designs are tailored to simple linear grippers and do not match the nonlinear mechanics of widely used robotic grippers. We present RUMI, a handheld universal manipulation interface matched to the Robotiq 2F-85 with exchangeable fingertip sensors that preserves the target gripper geometry while enabling natural input before contact and force measurement after contact. By integrating the tracking system into a virtual reality headset, our method provides real-time augmented reality feedback about the kinematic feasibility of motion on the target robot platform. We further introduce a haptic feedback mechanism that supports force-aware teleoperation for simulated and real robots. A user study shows fewer episodes containing joint-limit violations with live robot visualization and pose initialization (3/50) than without augmented reality (16/50). We additionally train imitation policies from demonstrations, collected using two different fingertip modalities enabled by the gripper-matched hardware, and assess the haptic interface's capability for collecting force-aware teleoperation datasets in simulation.
Abstract (translated)
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.15802
