Constraints and Planning for Forceful Robotic Manipulation

Enabling robots to perform multi-stage forceful manipulation tasks, such as

twisting a nut on a bolt or pulling a nail with a hammer claw, requires

enabling reasoning over interlocking force and motion constraints over discrete

and continuous choices. I categorize forceful manipulation as tasks where

exerting substantial forces is necessary to complete the task. While all

actions with contact involve forces, I focus on tasks where generating and

transmitting forces is a limiting factor of the task that must be reasoned over

and planned for. I'll first formalize constraints for forceful manipulation

tasks where the goal is to exert force, often through a tool, on an object or

the environment. These constraints define a task and motion planning problem

that we solve to search for both the sequences of discrete actions, or

strategy, and the continuous parameters of those actions.

This talk will primarily discuss two papers (IROS 2019, ICRA 2021) as well as

ongoing work. All work is done in collaboration with my two advisors, Tomás

Lozano-Pérez and Alberto Rodriguez.