Polyhedral Friction Cone Estimator for Object Manipulation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a method to estimate the polyhedral friction cone for object manipulation without prior knowledge of geometries or friction coefficients, enabling adaptive control in simulation and real robots.

Contribution

It presents a novel approach to estimate and adapt the polyhedral friction cone during manipulation, reducing reliance on prior geometric and friction data.

Findings

Effective estimation of friction cone in simulation and real robot experiments

Improved object manipulation control through adaptive friction cone estimation

Demonstrated robustness to unknown contact conditions

Abstract

A polyhedral friction cone is a set of reaction wrenches that an object can experience whilst in contact with its environment. This polyhedron is a powerful tool to control an object's motion and interaction with the environment. It can be derived analytically, upon knowledge of object and environment geometries, contact point locations and friction coefficients. We propose to estimate the polyhedral friction cone so that a priori knowledge of these quantities is no longer required. Additionally, we introduce a solution to transform the estimated friction cone to avoid re-estimation while the object moves. We present an analysis of the estimated polyhedral friction cone and demonstrate its application for manipulating an object in simulation and with a real robot.