Stable Pushing: Mechanics, Controllability, and Planning

March 23, 2023 Jeremiah Hendren

Stable Pushing: Mechanics, Controllability, and Planning

Lynch, Kevin M., and Matthew T. Mason
The International Journal of Robotics Research 15, no. 6 (1996): 533-556.
https://doi.org/10.1177/027836499601500602

One of the most basic tasks for a robotic manipulator is to move an object from one place to another. A common solution is to equip the manipulator with a gripper and adopt the pick-and-place approach. By designing the grasp to resist all forces that could reasonably act on the object during the motion, grasp planning and path planning can be decoupled. If the object is too large to be grasped or too heavy to be carried, however, this approach fails. It underutilizes the resources available to the robot, as it uses only the control forces that can be statically applied at the gripper. In general, the manipulator can apply forces through any of the frictional kinematic constraints that comprise it. Other useful sources of control forces include gravity, the frictional kinematic constraints (floor, walls, obstacles) making up the robot’s environment, and dynamic forces. If the robot can reason about these forces, it can use a richer set of manipulation primitives, including pushing, throwing, and striking.

Kevin Lynch & Matthew Mason

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