Towards Passivity Based Nonprehensile Bimanual Manipulation of Large Objects

Abstract

In this work a passivity based control scheme to manipulate large objects supported on planar surfaces by bimanual robots is introduced. A control input is designed to accomplish the rotation and displacement of the object to a desired pose without assuming any knowledge of the object dynamics and friction dynamics between the object and the supporting surface. Passivity arguments are used to rigorously prove its stability. The proposed method is evaluated in simulations with friction forces simulated using the elastoplastic model. Experimental results performed on a bimanual robot with two 7-dof KUKA LBR iiwa 7 arms manipulating a variety of large objects verify the theoretical results.