Efficient Sampling of Transition Constraints for Motion Planning under Sliding Contacts

Abstract

In contact-based motion planning we consider for humanoid and multiped robots problems like going up a staircase, walking over an uneven surface or climbing a steep hill. Solving such tasks requires finding sequences of fixed and sliding contacts and planning the transition from one contact in the environment to another. However, most existing algorithms do not take sliding contacts into account for navigation problems or consider them only for manipulation scenarios.We propose an approach to contact-based planning that uses sliding contacts and exploits contact transitions. Such transitions are elementary operations required for whole contact sequences. To model sliding contacts, we develop a sliding contact constraint that permits the robot to slide on an object's surface. To exploit contact transitions, we utilize three constraint modes to enable passage: contact with a start surface, no contact and contact with a goal surface. We develop a sampler that samples these transition modes uniformly. In this thesis we focus on the motion of one robot link's end from an initial contact point toward a designated goal surface while the other end of the robot remains in sliding contact with the initial surface.Our method is evaluated by testing it on manipulator arms of two, three and seven degrees of freedom with different objects and various sampling-based planning algorithms. From the considered manipulator arm, it would be possible to transfer our concept to more complex robots and scenarios and extend it to a whole sequence of contacts.