Dynamic movement primitives (DMPs) are a flexible trajectory learning scheme widely used in motion generation of robotic systems. However, existing DMP-based methods mainly focus on simple go-to-goal tasks. Motivated to handle tasks beyond point-to-point motion planning, this work presents temporal logic guided optimization of motion primitives, namely PIBB-TL algorithm, for complex manipulation tasks with user preferences. In particular, weighted truncated linear temporal logic (wTLTL) is incorporated in the PIBB-TL algorithm, which not only enables the encoding of complex tasks that involve a sequence of logically organized action plans with user preferences, but also provides a convenient and efficient means to design the cost function. The black-box optimization is then adapted to identify optimal shape parameters of DMPs to enable motion planning of robotic systems. The effectiveness of the PIBB-TL algorithm is demonstrated via simulation and experime
Recent studies on quadruped robots have focused on either locomotion or mobile manipulation using a robotic arm. Legged robots can manipulate heavier and larger objects using non-prehensile manipulation primitives, such as planar pushing, to drive the object to the desired location. In this paper, we present a novel hierarchical model predictive control (MPC) for contact optimization of the manipulation task. Using two cascading MPCs, we split the loco-manipulation problem into two parts: the first to optimize both contact force and contact location between the robot and the object, and the se…
Visuomotor control (VMC) is an effective means of achieving basic manipulation tasks such as pushing or pick-and-place from raw images. Conditioning VMC on desired goal states is a promising way of achieving versatile skill primitives. However, common conditioning schemes either rely on task-specific fine tuning - e.g. using one-shot imitation learning (IL) - or on sampling approaches using a forward model of scene dynamics i.e. model-predictive control (MPC), leaving deployability and planning horizon severely limited. In this paper we propose a conditioning scheme which avoids these pitfalls…
The objective of this work is to augment the basic abilities of a robot by learning to use sensorimotor primitives to solve complex long-horizon manipulation problems. This requires flexible generative planning that can combine primitive abilities in novel combinations and thus generalize across a wide variety of problems. In order to plan with primitive actions, we must have models of the actions: under what circumstances will executing this primitive successfully achieve some particular effect in the world? We use, and develop novel improvements on, state-of-the-art methods for active learni…
Reinforcement Learning with Parameterized Manipulation Primitives for Robotic Assembly
Singapore Centre for 3D Printing (SC3DP)（新加坡3D打印中心（SC3DP））；School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, NTU（南洋理工大学机械与航空航天工程学院）；Eureka Robotics（尤里卡机器人公司）
Singapore Centre for 3D Printing (SC3DP)（新加坡3D打印中心）；School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, NTU（南洋理工大学机械与航天工程学院）；Eureka Robotics（尤里卡机器人公司）
This paper explores the idea that skillful assembly is best represented as dynamic sequences of Manipulation Primitives, and that such sequences can be automatically discovered by Reinforcement Learning. Manipulation Primitives, such as "Move down until contact", "Slide along x while maintaining contact with the surface", have enough complexity to keep the search tree shallow, yet are generic enough to generalize across a wide range of assembly tasks. Moreover, the additional "semantics" of the Manipulation Primitives make them more robust in sim2real and against model/environment variations a…
We present a hybrid differential dynamic programming (DDP) algorithm for closed-loop execution of manipulation primitives with frictional contact switches. Planning and control of these primitives is challenging as they are hybrid, under-actuated, and stochastic. We address this by developing hybrid DDP both to plan finite horizon trajectories with a few contact switches and to create linear stabilizing controllers. We evaluate the performance and computational cost of our framework in ablations studies for two primitives: planar pushing and planar pivoting. We find that generating pose-to-pos…
The object manipulation is a crucial ability for a service robot, but it is hard to solve with reinforcement learning due to some reasons such as sample efficiency. In this paper, to tackle this object manipulation, we propose a novel framework, AP-NPQL (Non-Parametric Q Learning with Action Primitives), that can efficiently solve the object manipulation with visual input and sparse reward, by utilizing a non-parametric policy for reinforcement learning and appropriate behavior prior for the object manipulation. We evaluate the efficiency and the performance of the proposed AP-NPQL for four ob…
The discontinuities and multi-modality introduced by contacts make manipulation planning challenging. Many previous works avoid this problem by pre-designing a set of high-level motion primitives like grasping and pushing. However, such motion primitives are often not adequate to describe dexterous manipulation motions. In this work, we propose a method for dexterous manipulation planning at a more primitive level. The key idea is to use contact modes to guide the search in a sampling-based planning framework. Our method can automatically generate contact transitions and motion trajectories un…
University of Edinburgh（爱丁堡大学）；Heriot-Watt University（赫瑞-瓦特大学）
In an attempt to confer robots with complex manipulation capabilities, dual-arm anthropomorphic systems have become an important research topic in the robotics community. Most approaches in the literature rely upon a great understanding of the dynamics underlying the system's behaviour and yet offer limited autonomous generalisation capabilities. To address these limitations, this work proposes a modelisation for dual-arm manipulators based on dynamic movement primitives laying in two orthogonal spaces. The modularity and learning capabilities of this model are leveraged to formulate a novel e…
This report describes our approach for Phase 3 of the Real Robot Challenge. To solve cuboid manipulation tasks of varying difficulty, we decompose each task into the following primitives: moving the fingers to the cuboid to grasp it, turning it on the table to minimize orientation error, and re-positioning it to the goal position. We use model-based trajectory optimization and control to plan and execute these primitives. These grasping, turning, and re-positioning primitives are sequenced with a state-machine that determines which primitive to execute given the current object state and goal. …
This paper presents Contact Mode Guided Manipulation Planning (CMGMP) for 3D quasistatic and quasidynamic rigid body motion planning in dexterous manipulation. The CMGMP algorithm generates hybrid motion plans including both continuous state transitions and discrete contact mode switches, without the need for pre-specified contact sequences or pre-designed motion primitives. The key idea is to use automatically enumerated contact modes of environment-object contacts to guide the tree expansions during the search. Contact modes automatically synthesize manipulation primitives, while the samplin…
Many order fulfillment applications in logistics, such as packing, involve picking objects from unstructured piles before tightly arranging them in bins or shipping containers. Desirable robotic solutions in this space need to be low-cost, robust, easily deployable and simple to control. The current work proposes a complete pipeline for solving packing tasks for cuboid objects, given access only to RGB-D data and a single robot arm with a vacuum-based end-effector, which is also used as a pushing or dragging finger. The pipeline integrates perception for detecting the objects and planning so a…
Edinburgh Centre for Robotics（爱丁堡机器人中心）；University of Edinburgh（爱丁堡大学）；Heriot-Watt University（赫瑞-瓦特大学）
Robots are becoming a vital ingredient in society. Some of their daily tasks require dual-arm manipulation skills in the rapidly changing, dynamic and unpredictable real-world environments where they have to operate. Given the expertise of humans in conducting these activities, it is natural to study humans' motions to use the resulting knowledge in robotic control. With this in mind, this work leverages human knowledge to formulate a more general, real-time, and less task-specific framework for dual-arm manipulation. The proposed framework is evaluated on the iCub humanoid robot and several s…
PrimitiveVLA: Learning Reusable Motion Primitives for Efficient and Generalizable Robotic Manipulation
State Key Lab of Processors, Institute of Computing Technology, CAS（处理器国家重点实验室，计算技术研究所，中国科学院）；Jiangsu Key Laboratory of AI for Industries, Institute of AI for Industries, CAS（江苏人工智能工业重点实验室，人工智能工业研究所，中国科学院）；University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学）；Cambricon Technologies（寒武科技）；Intelligent Software Research Center, Institute of Software, CAS（软件研究所智能软件研究中心，中国科学院）；University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学）
Many objects commonly found in household and industrial environments are represented by cylindrical and cubic shapes. Thus, it is available for robots to manipulate them through the real-time detection of elliptic and rectangle shape primitives formed by the circular and rectangle tops of these objects. We devise a robust grasping system that enables a robot to manipulate cylindrical and cubic objects in collaboration scenarios by the proposed perception strategy including the detection of elliptic and rectangle shape primitives and depth information. The proposed method of detecting ellipses …
KTH Royal Institute of Technology（瑞典皇家理工学院）；Hong Kong University of Science and Technology（香港科技大学）
We propose the Dexterous Manipulation Graph as a tool to address in-hand manipulation and reposition an object inside a robot's end-effector. This graph is used to plan a sequence of manipulation primitives so to bring the object to the desired end pose. This sequence of primitives is translated into motions of the robot to move the object held by the end-effector. We use a dual arm robot with parallel grippers to test our method on a real system and show successful planning and execution of in-hand manipulation.
Realistic manipulation tasks require a robot to interact with an environment with a prolonged sequence of motor actions. While deep reinforcement learning methods have recently emerged as a promising paradigm for automating manipulation behaviors, they usually fall short in long-horizon tasks due to the exploration burden. This work introduces Manipulation Primitive-augmented reinforcement Learning (MAPLE), a learning framework that augments standard reinforcement learning algorithms with a pre-defined library of behavior primitives. These behavior primitives are robust functional modules spec…
SPEAR: Selective Preference Elicitation with Adaptive Rewards for VLM-Guided Robotic Manipulation
HKU Musketeers Foundation Institute of Data Science, The University of Hong Kong（香港大学港大剑客基金会数据科学研究所）；Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Hong Kong（香港大学电气与电子工程系）
University of Modena and Reggio Emilia（摩德纳-雷焦艾米利亚大学）；University of Naples（那不勒斯大学）
This paper proposes a technique to manipulate an object with a nonholonomic mobile robot by pushing, which is a nonprehensile manipulation motion primitive. Such a primitive involves unilateral constraints associated with the friction between the robot and the manipulated object. Violating this constraint produces the slippage of the object during the manipulation, preventing the correct achievement of the task. A linear time-varying model predictive control is designed to include the unilateral constraint within the control action properly. The approach is verified in a dynamic simulation env…
Harness VLA: Steering Frozen VLAs into Reliable Manipulation Primitives via Memory-Guided Agents
Tsinghua University（清华大学）；Striding AI（驰行人工智能公司）；Purdue University（普渡大学）；Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院自动化研究所）；Infinigence AI（英飞智研人工智能公司）；Zhongguancun Academy（中关村学院）；Hong Kong University of Science and Technology（香港科技大学）
Robot manipulation in cluttered scenes often requires contact-rich interactions with objects. It can be more economical to interact via non-prehensile actions, for example, push through other objects to get to the desired grasp pose, instead of deliberate prehensile rearrangement of the scene. For each object in a scene, depending on its properties, the robot may or may not be allowed to make contact with, tilt, or topple it. To ensure that these constraints are satisfied during non-prehensile interactions, a planner can query a physics-based simulator to evaluate the complex multi-body intera…
VLP: Vision-Language Preference Learning for Embodied Manipulation
Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University（清华大学深圳国际研究生院）；Institute of Artificial Intelligence (TeleAI), China Telecom（中国电信人工智能研究院）；King’s College London（伦敦国王学院）
RH20T-P: A Primitive-Level Robotic Dataset Towards Composable Generalization Agents
Shanghai AI Laboratory（上海人工智能实验室）；School of Software, Beihang University（北京航空航天大学软件学院）；Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学）；University of Sydney（悉尼大学）
This paper develops closed-loop tactile controllers for dexterous robotic manipulation with a dual-palm robotic system. Tactile dexterity is an approach to dexterous manipulation that plans for robot/object interactions that render interpretable tactile information for control. We divide the role of tactile control into two goals: 1) control the contact state between the end-effector and the object (contact/no-contact, stick/slip) by regulating the stability of planned contact configurations and monitoring undesired slip events; and 2) control the object state by tactile-based tracking and ite…
Learning Forward & Reverse Skills from a Single Unfinished Demonstration for Constrained Manipulation Tasks
Autonomous Systems Lab, Technische Universität Wien (TU Wien)（自主系统实验室，维也纳工业大学（TU Wien））；Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics, German Aerospace Center (DLR)（机器人与机电一体化研究所，德国航空航天中心（DLR））
Northeastern University（东北大学）；University of California, San Diego（加利福尼亚大学圣迭戈分校）
We present a deep imitation learning framework for robotic bimanual manipulation in a continuous state-action space. A core challenge is to generalize the manipulation skills to objects in different locations. We hypothesize that modeling the relational information in the environment can significantly improve generalization. To achieve this, we propose to (i) decompose the multi-modal dynamics into elemental movement primitives, (ii) parameterize each primitive using a recurrent graph neural network to capture interactions, and (iii) integrate a high-level planner that composes primitives sequ…
