A dipole field for object delivery by pushing on a flat surface

Abstract

Abstract-This paper introduces a simple algorithm for non-prehensile object transportation by a pushing robot on a flat surface. We assume that the global position and orientation of the robot and objects are known. The system computes a dipole field around the object and moves the robot along the field. This simple algorithm resolves many subtle issues in implementing reliable pushing behaviors, such as collision avoidance, error recovery, and multi-robot coordination. We verify the effectiveness of the algorithm via several experiments with varying robot and object form factors. Although object delivery by pushing and motion control by a vector field are not new, the proposed algorithm offers easier implementation with fewer parameter adjustments because of its mode-less definition and scale-invariant formulation.

Push-manipulation of complex passive mobile objects using experimentally acquired motion models

“…de Berg and Gerrits (2010) computationally improve this approach and present both a contact preserving and an unrestricted push planning method in which the pusher can occasionally let go of the object. Similar to the potential field based motion planners (Khatib, 1986), Igarashi et al (2010) propose a method that computes dipole-like vector fields around the object that guide the motion of the robot to get behind the object and push it towards the target. Relatively slow robot motions and high friction for the objects are assumed, and robots with circular bumpers are used to push circular and rectangular objects of various sizes in single and multirobot scenarios.…”

Multi-robot multi-object rearrangement in assignment space

“…Fig. 7 summarises the planning times obtained for sets 1 and 2 1 . Interestingly, the results demonstrate an average computation time reduction of 35% if the credit system is utilized.…”

“…To avoid collisions all queues were progressed simultaneously and only after every robot had successfully executed its current primitive. Since object drift can occur during the execution of a push primitive, we applied our Dipole Method [1] to overcome motion uncertainty. The dipole method computes a dipole field around the object which guides the robot.…”

Automatic learning of pushing strategy for delivery of irregular-shaped objects

“…Pushing is useful for object delivery, bulldozing/construction operations, cleaning tasks, and robot soccer. However, many existing approaches [1], [2], [3], [4], [5] push objects with regular shapes such as circles, squares, and rectangles.…”

“…For environments with obstacles, we first use a global planner to generate a high-level path and then use our method to push the object towards sub-goals along this path. We empirically compare our approach with an existing method for pushing circular objects [5].…”