RICE: Reactive Interaction Controller for Cluttered Canopy Environment

TL;DR

This paper introduces a reactive control method for robotic navigation in dense, cluttered plant environments, enabling safe, adaptive interaction without damaging foliage, and demonstrating superior robustness over existing controllers.

Contribution

A novel reactive controller utilizing tactile feedback for safe navigation in cluttered, deformable environments, outperforming existing model-free controllers in robustness and adaptability.

Findings

Successfully reached targets in all trials without damaging branches

Outperformed state-of-the-art controllers in robustness

Demonstrated effectiveness in three different plant setups

Abstract

Robotic navigation in dense, cluttered environments such as agricultural canopies presents significant challenges due to physical and visual occlusion caused by leaves and branches. Traditional vision-based or model-dependent approaches often fail in these settings, where physical interaction without damaging foliage and branches is necessary to reach a target. We present a novel reactive controller that enables safe navigation for a robotic arm in a contact-rich, cluttered, deformable environment using end-effector position and real-time tactile feedback. Our proposed framework's interaction strategy is based on a trade-off between minimizing disturbance by maneuvering around obstacles and pushing through them to move towards the target. We show that over 35 trials in 3 experimental plant setups with an occluded target, the proposed controller successfully reached the target in all trials without breaking any branch and outperformed the state-of-the-art model-free controller in robustness and adaptability. This work lays the foundation for safe, adaptive interaction in cluttered, contact-rich deformable environments, enabling future agricultural tasks such as pruning and harvesting in plant canopies.