Push, Press, Slide: Mode-Aware Planar Contact Manipulation via Reduced-Order Models

TL;DR

This paper introduces a mode-aware, reduced-order modeling framework for planar robotic manipulation tasks like pushing and press-and-slide, enabling fast, optimization-free control by abstracting complex mechanics into simple, physically intuitive models.

Contribution

It presents a novel mode-aware approach that maps contact topologies to simplified models, facilitating efficient, feasible manipulation planning without iterative optimization.

Findings

Framework achieves fast computation in simulation

Handles diverse single-arm and bimanual tasks

Ensures long-horizon feasibility with manipulator kinematics

Abstract

Non-prehensile planar manipulation, including pushing and press-and-slide, is critical for diverse robotic tasks, but notoriously challenging due to hybrid contact mechanics, under-actuation, and asymmetric friction limits that traditionally necessitate computationally expensive iterative control. In this paper, we propose a mode-aware framework for planar manipulation with one or two robotic arms based on contact topology selection and reduced-order kinematic modeling. Our core insight is that complex wrench-twist limit surface mechanics can be abstracted into a discrete library of physically intuitive models. We systematically map various single-arm and bimanual contact topologies to simple non-holonomic formulations, e.g. unicycle for simplified press-and-slide motion. By anchoring trajectory generation to these reduced-order models, our framework computes the required object wrench and distributes feasible, friction-bounded contact forces via a direct algebraic allocator. We incorporate manipulator kinematics to ensure long-horizon feasibility and demonstrate our fast, optimization-free approach in simulation across diverse single-arm and bimanual manipulation tasks. Supplementary videos and additional information are available at: https://sites.google.com/view/pushpressslide