Manipulation of unknown objects via contact configuration regulation

TL;DR

This paper introduces an object-agnostic method for robotic manipulation of unknown objects by regulating contact configurations, enabling reactive control without prior knowledge of object pose or geometry.

Contribution

It develops a novel framework that estimates and controls contact constraints directly, facilitating manipulation of unknown planar objects without requiring object-specific information.

Findings

Successfully manipulates unknown objects in the gravity plane

Estimates contact constraints without prior object knowledge

Enables reactive manipulation based on contact regulation

Abstract

We present an approach to robotic manipulation of unknown objects through regulation of the object's contact configuration: the location, geometry, and mode of all contacts between the object, robot, and environment. A contact configuration constrains the forces and motions that can be applied to the object; however, synthesizing these constraints generally requires knowledge of the object's pose and geometry. We develop an object-agnostic approach for estimation and control that circumvents this need. Our framework directly estimates a set of wrench and motion constraints which it uses to regulate the contact configuration. We use this to reactively manipulate unknown planar objects in the gravity plane. A video describing our work can be found on our project page: http://mcube.mit.edu/research/contactConfig.html.