Kineverse: A Symbolic Articulation Model Framework for Model-Agnostic Mobile Manipulation

TL;DR

Kineverse introduces a symbolic mathematical framework for modeling articulated structures in robots and objects, enabling flexible, parameterized state estimation and manipulation for service robots handling complex tasks.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel symbolic articulation model framework that unifies and extends existing models, supporting flexible, parameterized representations for robotic applications.

Findings

Effective in state estimation tasks

Enables real-world mobile manipulation

Flexible and extensible modeling approach

Abstract

Service robots in the future need to execute abstract instructions such as "fetch the milk from the fridge". To translate such instructions into actionable plans, robots require in-depth background knowledge. With regards to interactions with doors and drawers, robots require articulation models that they can use for state estimation and motion planning. Existing frameworks model articulated connections as abstract concepts such as prismatic, or revolute, but do not provide a parameterized model of these connections for computation. In this paper, we introduce a novel framework that uses symbolic mathematical expressions to model articulated structures -- robots and objects alike -- in a unified and extensible manner. We provide a theoretical description of this framework, and the operations that are supported by its models, and introduce an architecture to exchange our models in robotic applications, making them as flexible as any other environmental observation. To demonstrate the utility of our approach, we employ our practical implementation Kineverse for solving common robotics tasks from state estimation and mobile manipulation, and use it further in real-world mobile robot manipulation.