Area-Coverage Planning for Spray-based Surface Disinfection with a Mobile Manipulator

The use of robots has significantly increased to fight highly contagious diseases like SARS-COV-2, Ebola, MERS, and others. One of the important applications of robots to fight such infectious diseases is disinfection. Manual disinfection can be a time-consuming, risky, labor-intensive, and mundane, and humans may fail to disinfect critical areas due to the resulting fatigue. Autonomous or semi-autonomous mobile manipulators mounted with a spray nozzle at the end-effector can be very effective in spraying disinfectant liquid for deep disinfection of objects and surfaces. In this paper, we present an area-coverage planning algorithm to compute a path that the nozzle follows to disinfect surfaces represented by their point clouds. We project the point cloud on a plane and produce a polygon on which we generate multiple spray paths using our branch and bound-based tree search area-coverage algorithm such that the spray paths cover the entire area of the polygon. An appropriate spray path is chosen using a robot capability map-based selection criterion. We generate mobile manipulator trajectories using successive refinement-based parametric optimization so that the paths for the nozzle are followed accurately. Thereafter, we need to make sure that the joint velocities of the mobile manipulator are regulated appropriately such that each point on the surface receives enough disinfectant spray. To this end, we compute the time intervals between the robot path waypoints such that enough disinfectant liquid is sprayed on all points of the point cloud that results in thorough disinfection of the surface, and the particular robot path is executed in the minimum possible time. We have implemented the area-coverage planning and mobile manipulator motion planning on five test scenarios in simulation using our ADAMMS-SD (Agile Dexterous Autonomous Mobile Manipulation System for Surface Disinfection) robot. We benchmark our spray path generation algorithm with three competing methods by showing that the generated paths are significantly more efficient in terms of area coverage and reducing disinfectant wastage. We also show the time interval computation between successive waypoints results in thorough disinfection of surfaces.

Global motion planning and redundancy resolution for large objects manipulation by dual redundant robots with closed kinematics

The multi-arm robotic systems consisting of redundant robots are able to conduct more complex and coordinated tasks, such as manipulating large or heavy objects. The challenges of the motion planning and control for such systems mainly arise from the closed-chain constraint and redundancy resolution problem. The closed-chain constraint reduces the configuration space to lower-dimensional subsets, making it difficult for sampling feasible configurations and planning path connecting them. A global motion planner is proposed in this paper for the closed-chain systems, and motions in different disconnected manifolds are efficiently bridged by two type regrasping moves. The regrasping moves are automatically chosen by the planner based on cost-saving principle, which greatly improve the success rate and efficiency. Furthermore, to obtain the optional inverse kinematic solutions satisfying joint physical limits (e.g., joint position, velocity, acceleration limits) in the planning, the redundancy resolution problem for dual redundant robots is converted into a unified quadratic programming problem based on the combination of two diff erent-level optimizing criteria, i.e. the minimization velocity norm (MVN) and infinity norm torque-minimization (INTM). The Dual-MVN-INTM scheme guarantees smooth velocity, acceleration profiles, and zero final velocity at the end of motion. Finally, the planning results of three complex closed-chain manipulation task using two Franka Emika Panda robots and two Kinova Jaco2 robots in both simulation and experiment demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed method.

Generation of synchronized configuration space trajectories with workspace path constraints for an ensemble of robots

We present an approach to generate path-constrained synchronous motion for the coupled ensemble of robots. In this article, we refer to serial-link manipulators and mobile bases as robots. We assume that the relative motion constraints among the objects in the environment are given. We represent the motion constraints as path constraints and pose the problem of path-constrained synchronous trajectory generation as a non-linear optimization problem. Our approach generates configuration space trajectories for the robots to manipulate the objects such that the given motion constraints among the objects are satisfied. We present a method that formulates the problem as a discrete parameter optimization problem and solves it using successive constraint refinement techniques. The method adaptively selects the parametric representation of the configuration variables for a given scenario. It also generates an approximate solution as the starting point for the successive constraint refinement stages to reduce the computation time. We discuss in detail why successive constraint refinement strategies are useful for solving this class of problems. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method on challenging test cases in simulation and physical environments with high-degree-of-freedom robotic systems.

Exploring implicit spaces for constrained sampling-based planning

We present a review and reformulation of manifold constrained sampling-based motion planning within a unifying framework, IMACS (implicit manifold configuration space). IMACS enables a broad class of motion planners to plan in the presence of manifold constraints, decoupling the choice of motion planning algorithm and method for constraint adherence into orthogonal choices. We show that implicit configuration spaces defined by constraints can be presented to sampling-based planners by addressing two key fundamental primitives, sampling and local planning, and that IMACS preserves theoretical properties of probabilistic completeness and asymptotic optimality through these primitives. Within IMACS, we implement projection- and continuation-based methods for constraint adherence, and demonstrate the framework on a range of planners with both methods in simulated and realistic scenarios. Our results show that the choice of method for constraint adherence depends on many factors and that novel combinations of planners and methods of constraint adherence can be more effective than previous approaches. Our implementation of IMACS is open source within the Open Motion Planning Library and is easily extended for novel planners and constraint spaces.

Inverse kinematics-based motion planning for dual-arm robot with orientation constraints

This article proposes an efficient and probabilistic complete planning algorithm to address motion planning problem involving orientation constraints for decoupled dual-arm robots. The algorithm is to combine sampling-based planning method with analytical inverse kinematic calculation, which randomly samples constraint-satisfying configurations on the constraint manifold using the analytical inverse kinematic solver and incrementally connects them to the motion paths in joint space. As the analytical inverse kinematic solver is applied to calculate constraint-satisfying joint configurations, the proposed algorithm is characterized by its efficiency and accuracy. We have demonstrated the effectiveness of our approach on the Willow Garage’s PR2 simulation platform by generating trajectory across a wide range of orientation-constrained scenarios for dual-arm manipulation.

Learning the Metric of Task Constraint Manifolds for Constrained Motion Planning

Finding feasible motion for robots with high-dimensional configuration space is a fundamental problem in robotics. Sampling-based motion planning algorithms have been shown to be effective for these high-dimensional systems. However, robots are often subject to task constraints (e.g., keeping a glass of water upright, opening doors and coordinating operation with dual manipulators), which introduce significant challenges to sampling-based motion planners. In this work, we introduce a method to establish approximate model for constraint manifolds, and to compute an approximate metric for constraint manifolds. The manifold metric is combined with motion planning methods based on projection operations, which greatly improves the efficiency and success rate of motion planning tasks under constraints. The proposed method Approximate Graph-based Constrained Bi-direction Rapidly Exploring Tree (AG-CBiRRT), which improves upon CBiRRT, and CBiRRT were tested on several task constraints, highlighting the benefits of our approach for constrained motion planning tasks.

A general framework for task-constrained motion planning with moving obstacles

Consider the practically relevant situation in which a robotic system is assigned a task to be executed in an environment that contains moving obstacles. Generating collision-free motions that allow the robot to execute the task while complying with its control input limitations is a challenging problem, whose solution must be sought in the robot state space extended with time. We describe a general planning framework which can be tailored to robots described by either kinematic or dynamic models. The main component is a control-based scheme for producing configuration space subtrajectories along which the task constraint is continuously satisfied. The geometric motion and time history along each subtrajectory are generated separately in order to guarantee feasibility of the latter and at the same time make the scheme intrinsically more flexible. A randomized algorithm then explores the search space by repeatedly invoking the motion generation scheme and checking the produced subtrajectories for collisions. The proposed framework is shown to provide a probabilistically complete planner both in the kinematic and the dynamic case. Modified versions of the planners based on the exploration–exploitation approach are also devised to improve search efficiency or optimize a performance criterion along the solution. We present results in various scenarios involving non-holonomic mobile robots and fixed-based manipulators to show the performance of the planner.

GPAtlasRRT: A Local Tactile Exploration Planner for Recovering the Shape of Novel Objects

Touch is an important modality to recover object shape. We present a method for a robot to complete a partial shape model by local tactile exploration. In local tactile exploration, the finger is constrained to follow the local surface. This is useful for recovering information about a contiguous portion of the object and is frequently employed by humans. There are three contributions. First, we show how to segment an initial point cloud of a grasped, unknown object into hand and object. Second, we present a local tactile exploration planner. This combines a Gaussian Process (GP) model of the object surface with an AtlasRRT planner. The GP predicts the unexplored surface and the uncertainty of that prediction. The AtlasRRT creates a tactile exploration path across this predicted surface, driving it towards the region of greatest uncertainty. Finally, we experimentally compare the planner with alternatives in simulation, and demonstrate the complete approach on a real robot. We show that our planner successfully traverses the object, and that the full object shape can be recovered with a good degree of accuracy.