Tethered Tool Manipulation Planning with Cable Maneuvering
This addresses a specific challenge in robotics for tasks involving tethered tools, such as in industrial or maintenance settings, but it is incremental as it builds on existing manipulation planning methods.
The paper tackles the problem of manipulating tethered tools with dual-armed robots by developing a planner that generates motion sequences to handle the tool and its cable, avoiding entanglements and excess bending, as validated through simulations and real-world experiments.
In this paper, we present a planner for manipulating tethered tools using dual-armed robots. The planner generates robot motion sequences to maneuver a tool and its cable while avoiding robot-cable entanglements. Firstly, the planner generates an Object Manipulation Motion Sequence (OMMS) to handle the tool and place it in desired poses. Secondly, the planner examines the tool movement associated with the OMMS and computes candidate positions for a cable slider, to maneuver the tool cable and avoid collisions. Finally, the planner determines the optimal slider positions to avoid entanglements and generates a Cable Manipulation Motion Sequence (CMMS) to place the slider in these positions. The robot executes both the OMMS and CMMS to handle the tool and its cable to avoid entanglements and excess cable bending. Simulations and real-world experiments help validate the proposed method.