DexNex is the bimanual dexterous teleoperation system at Northwestern. This project will produce a high-fidelity simulation of DexNex using Drake as the physics/simulation engine. In order to support other projects in Thrust 2, the simulation will support:

– Repeatable testing/development of basic teleop and control capabilities.
– Rapid simulation-based experiments to evaluate novel hardware/sensing capabilities.
– Machine learning approaches for dexterous control and autonomy.

We anticipate this simulation being an important shared resource across the center, and that support will quickly expand to cover novel hardware from thrusts 1 and 3.

The DexNex hardware platform.