Non-Prehensile Manipulation of Cuboid Objects Using a Catenary Robot

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel autonomous system using a catenary robot with two quadrotors and a cable to efficiently manipulate cuboid objects through rolling and dragging, eliminating manual attachment and intervention.

Contribution

The work presents a fully automated non-prehensile manipulation method for cuboid objects using a dual-quadrotor catenary system, adaptable to different surface friction conditions.

Findings

Successful simulation validation of control strategies.

Real-world experiments demonstrating object rolling and dragging.

Effective automation without human intervention in object manipulation.

Abstract

Transporting objects using quadrotors with cables has been widely studied in the literature. However, most of those approaches assume that the cables are previously attached to the load by human intervention. In tasks where multiple objects need to be moved, the efficiency of the robotic system is constrained by the requirement of manual labor. Our approach uses a non-stretchable cable connected to two quadrotors, which we call the catenary robot, that fully automates the transportation task. Using the cable, we can roll and drag the cuboid object (box) on planar surfaces. Depending on the surface type, we choose the proper action, dragging for low friction, and rolling for high friction. Therefore, the transportation process does not require any human intervention as we use the cable to interact with the box without requiring fastening. We validate our control design in simulation and with actual robots, where we show them rolling and dragging boxes to track desired trajectories.