Force modulation of robotic manipulators has been extensively studied for several decades but is not yet commonly used in safety-critical applications due to a lack of accurate interaction contact modeling and weak performance guarantees - a large proportion of them concerning the modulation of interaction forces. This study presents a high-level framework for simultaneous trajectory optimization and force control of the interaction between manipulator and soft environments. Sliding friction and normal contact force are taken into account. The dynamics of the soft contact model and the manipulator dynamics are simultaneously incorporated in the trajectory optimizer to generate desired motion and force profiles. A constraint optimization framework based on Differential Dynamic Programming and Alternative Direction Method of Multipliers has been employed to generate optimal control input and high-dimensional state trajectories. Experimental validation of the model performance is conducted on a soft substrate with known material properties using Cartesian space force control mode. Results show a comparison of ground truth and predicted model based contact force states for a few cartesian motions and the validity range of the friction model. Potential applications include high-level task planning of medical tasks involving manipulation of compliant, delicate, and deformable tissues.
Planning a time-optimal trajectory for aerial robots is critical in many drone applications, such as rescue missions and package delivery, which have been widely researched in recent years. However, it still involves several challenges, particularly when it comes to incorporating special task requirements into the planning as well as the aerial robot's dynamics. In this work, we study a case where an aerial manipulator shall hand over a parcel from a moving mobile robot in a time-optimal manner. Rather than setting up the approach trajectory manually, which makes it difficult to determine the …
State-of-the-art approaches to optimal control use smooth approximations of value and policy functions and gradient-based algorithms for improving approximator parameters. Unfortunately, we show that value and policy functions that arise in optimal control of mechanical systems subject to unilateral constraints -- i.e. the contact-rich dynamics of robot locomotion and manipulation -- are generally nonsmooth due to the underlying dynamics exhibiting discontinuous or piecewise-differentiable trajectory outcomes. Simple mechanical systems are used to illustrate this result and the implications fo…
This paper addresses the problem of efficiently computing higher-order variational integrators in simulation and trajectory optimization of mechanical systems as those often found in robotic applications. We develop $O(n)$ algorithms to evaluate the discrete Euler-Lagrange (DEL) equations and compute the Newton direction for solving the DEL equations, which results in linear-time variational integrators of arbitrarily high order. To our knowledge, no linear-time higher-order variational or even implicit integrators have been developed before. Moreover, an $O(n^2)$ algorithm to linearize the DE…
Motion planning for multi-jointed robots is challenging. Due to the inherent complexity of the problem, most existing works decompose motion planning as easier subproblems. However, because of the inconsistent performance metrics, only sub-optimal solution can be found by decomposition based approaches. This paper presents an optimal control based approach to address the path planning and trajectory planning subproblems simultaneously. Unlike similar works which either ignore robot dynamics or require long computation time, an efficient numerical method for trajectory optimization is presented…
Florida State University（佛罗里达州立大学）；Lightspeed & Quantum Studios, Tencent America（腾讯美国光子工作室群）
We propose a variant of alternating direction method of multiplier (ADMM) to solve constrained trajectory optimization problems. Our ADMM framework breaks a joint optimization into small sub-problems, leading to a low iteration cost and decentralized parameter updates. Starting from a collision-free initial trajectory, our method inherits the theoretical properties of primal interior point method (P-IPM), i.e., guaranteed collision avoidance and homotopy preservation throughout optimization, while being orders of magnitude faster. We have analyzed the convergence and evaluated our method for t…
Efficient trajectory planning for urban intersections is currently one of the most challenging tasks for an Autonomous Vehicle (AV). Courteous behavior towards other traffic participants, the AV's comfort and its progression in the environment are the key aspects that determine the performance of trajectory planning algorithms. To capture these aspects, we propose a novel trajectory planning framework that ensures social compliance and simultaneously optimizes the AV's comfort subject to kinematic constraints. The framework combines a local continuous optimization approach and an efficient dri…
University of Zagreb Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing（萨格勒布大学电气工程与计算学院）
This paper deals with motion planning for multiple agents by representing the problem as a simultaneous optimization of every agent's trajectory. Each trajectory is considered as a sample from a one-dimensional continuous-time Gaussian process (GP) generated by a linear time-varying stochastic differential equation driven by white noise. By formulating the planning problem as probabilistic inference on a factor graph, the structure of the pertaining GP can be exploited to find the solution efficiently using numerical optimization. In contrast to planning each agent's trajectory individually, w…
Time-Optimized Trajectory Planning for Non-Prehensile Object Transportation in 3D
Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MIRMI), Technical University of Munich（慕尼黑工业大学慕尼黑机器人与机器智能研究所（MIRMI））；Centre for Tactile Internet with Human-in-the-Loop (CeTI)（以人为中心的触觉互联网中心（CeTI））
Zhejiang University（浙江大学）；Huzhou Institute of Zhejiang University（浙江大学湖州研究院）
The visibility of targets determines performance and even success rate of various applications, such as active slam, exploration, and target tracking. Therefore, it is crucial to take the visibility of targets into explicit account in trajectory planning. In this paper, we propose a general metric for target visibility, considering observation distance and angle as well as occlusion effect. We formulate this metric into a differentiable visibility cost function, with which spatial trajectory and yaw can be jointly optimized. Furthermore, this visibility-aware trajectory optimization handles dy…
Agency for Defense Development（国防发展局）；Ground Technology Research Institute（地面技术研究院）
Neural networks have been increasingly employed in Model Predictive Controller (MPC) to control nonlinear dynamic systems. However, MPC still poses a problem that an achievable update rate is insufficient to cope with model uncertainty and external disturbances. In this paper, we present a novel control scheme that can design an optimal tracking controller using the neural network dynamics of the MPC, making it possible to be applied as a plug-and-play extension for any existing model-based feedforward controller. We also describe how our method handles a neural network containing history info…
UTA Research Institute, University of Texas at Arlington（德克萨斯大学阿灵顿分校UTA研究所）；Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL)（三菱电机研究实验室（MERL））；University of Texas at Arlington（德克萨斯大学阿灵顿分校）
The goal of this paper is to present a method for simultaneous trajectory and local stabilizing policy optimization to generate local policies for trajectory-centric model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL). This is motivated by the fact that global policy optimization for non-linear systems could be a very challenging problem both algorithmically and numerically. However, a lot of robotic manipulation tasks are trajectory-centric, and thus do not require a global model or policy. Due to inaccuracies in the learned model estimates, an open-loop trajectory optimization process mostly results i…
We propose factor graph optimization for simultaneous planning, control, and trajectory estimation for collision-free navigation of autonomous systems in environments with moving objects. The proposed online probabilistic motion planning and trajectory estimation navigation technique generates optimal collision-free state and control trajectories for autonomous vehicles when the obstacle motion model is both unknown and known. We evaluate the utility of the algorithm to support future autonomous robotic space missions.
Institute for Robotics & Intelligent Machines, Georgia Institute of Technology（佐治亚理工学院机器人与智能机器研究所）
We present a unified probabilistic framework for simultaneous trajectory estimation and planning (STEAP). Estimation and planning problems are usually considered separately, however, within our framework we show that solving them simultaneously can be more accurate and efficient. The key idea is to compute the full continuous-time trajectory from start to goal at each time-step. While the robot traverses the trajectory, the history portion of the trajectory signifies the solution to the estimation problem, and the future portion of the trajectory signifies a solution to the planning problem. B…
Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine（帝国理工学院）
When carrying out tasks in contact with the environment, humans are found to concurrently adapt force, impedance and trajectory. Here we develop a robotic model of this mechanism in humans and analyse the underlying dynamics. We derive a general adaptive controller for the interaction of a robot with an environment solely characterised by its stiffness and damping, using Lyapunov theory.
When limbs are decoupled, we find that trajectory outcomes in mechanical systems subject to unilateral constraints vary differentiably with respect to initial conditions, even as the contact mode sequence varies.
Nanyang Technological University（南洋理工大学）；University of Oxford（牛津大学）
Simultaneous trajectory prediction for multiple heterogeneous traffic participants is essential for the safe and efficient operation of connected automated vehicles under complex driving situations in the real world. The multi-agent prediction task is challenging, as the motions of traffic participants are affected by many factors, including their individual dynamics, their interactions with surrounding agents, the traffic infrastructures, and the number and modalities of the target agents. To further advance the trajectory prediction techniques, in this work we propose a three-channel framewo…
STERN: Simultaneous Trajectory Estimation and Relative Navigation for Autonomous Underwater Proximity Operations
Centre for Naval Architecture, KTH Royal Institute of Technology（KTH皇家理工学院海军建筑中心）；Division of Robotics, Perception, and Learning, KTH Royal Institute of Technology（KTH皇家理工学院机器人、感知与学习系）
We address the problem of adapting robot trajectories to improve safety, comfort, and efficiency in human-robot collaborative tasks. To this end, we propose CoMOTO, a trajectory optimization framework that utilizes stochastic motion prediction models to anticipate the human's motion and adapt the robot's joint trajectory accordingly. We design a multi-objective cost function that simultaneously optimizes for i) separation distance, ii) visibility of the end-effector, iii) legibility, iv) efficiency, and v) smoothness. We evaluate CoMOTO against three existing methods for robot trajectory gener…
Intelligent Systems & Control (ISaC) Lab, Department of Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay（智能系统与控制实验室，航空航天工程系，印度理工学院孟买分校）；Guidance, Autonomy, Learning, and Control for Intelligent Systems (GALACxIS) Lab, Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, University of Cincinnati（智能系统引导、自主性、学习与控制（GALACxIS）实验室，航空航天工程与工程力学系，辛辛那提大学）
Jan C. Willems Center for Systems and Control（扬·C·威廉姆斯系统与控制中心）；Engineering and Technology Institute Groningen (ENTEG)（格罗宁根工程技术研究所（ENTEG））；University of Groningen（格罗宁根大学）
In this work, we propose a passivity-based control approach that addresses the trajectory tracking problem for a class of mechanical systems that comprises a broad range of robotic arms. The resulting controllers can be naturally saturated and do not require velocity measurements. Moreover, the proposed methodology does not require the implementation of observers, and the structure of the closed-loop system permits the identification of a Lyapunov function, which eases the convergence analysis. To corroborate the effectiveness of the methodology, we perform experiments with the Philips Experim…
