Jenga game by a manipulator with multiarticulated fingers

Jenga game requires both the skill of a robot hand for dexterous block manipulation and the intelligence for deciding the strategy on which block should be removed and where this block should be placed on to the top level. This paper describes our development of a robot manipulator system that can play Jenga. Unlike most of the previous Jenga robots that use grippers, this manipulator has a hand with two mulitiarticulated fingers covered by soft skin. This robot system recognizes the status of stacked blocks by using an omnidirectional camera which is attached to the robot hand. The robot selects a block for removal by the evaluation function based on the stability of the tower. An experimental result of a game played between the robot and a human player is presented.