In-Hand Manipulation via Motion Cones
This addresses in-hand manipulation for robotics by providing faster planning algorithms, though it is incremental as it builds on existing motion cone concepts.
The paper tackles the problem of computing feasible motions for objects pushed in a plane, generalizing motion cones to include external forces and prehensile tasks, and demonstrates a planning algorithm with 5-1000x speed improvements.
In this paper, we present the mechanics and algorithms to compute the set of feasible motions of an object pushed in a plane. This set is known as the motion cone and was previously described for non-prehensile manipulation tasks in the horizontal plane. We generalize its geometric construction to a broader set of planar tasks, where external forces such as gravity influence the dynamics of pushing, and prehensile tasks, where there are complex interactions between the gripper, object, and pusher. We show that the motion cone is defined by a set of low-curvature surfaces and provide a polyhedral cone approximation to it. We verify its validity with 2000 pushing experiments recorded with motion tracking system. Motion cones abstract the algebra involved in simulating frictional pushing by providing bounds on the set of feasible motions and by characterizing which pushes will stick or slip. We demonstrate their use for the dynamic propagation step in a sampling-based planning algorithm for in-hand manipulation. The planner generates trajectories that involve sequences of continuous pushes with 5-1000x speed improvements to equivalent algorithms. Video Summary -- https://youtu.be/tVDO8QMuYhc