Trajectory Planning for Non-Prehensile Object Transportation

Abstract

Non-prehensile transportation of unstable objects presents a challenging task in robotics. To ensure the success of the transportation, it is necessary to consider both the object’s stability via contact dynamics and the motion constraints of the robot. We propose two novel trajectory planning methods derived from sampling and dynamic programming algorithms, tested on a 7-DoF Franka Emika robot against common strategies like Model Predictive Control (MPC) and S-curve planning, particularly under the constraint of a non-rotating tray. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of our methodologies in improving transportation speed. This research contributes to advancements in robotic manipulation techniques by tackling non-prehensile manipulation of dynamically unstable objects.