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Collaborating Authors

 Chen, Bingjie


CushionCatch: Compliant Catching Mechanism for Mobile Manipulators via Combined Optimization and Learning

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

This paper presents a framework to achieve compliant catching with cushioning mechanism(CCCM) for mobile manipulators. First, we introduce a two-level motion optimization scheme, comprising a high-level capture planner and a low-level joint planner. The low-level joint planner consists of two distinct components: Pre-Catching (PRC) planner and Post-Catching (POC) planner. Next, we propose a network that leverages the strengths of LSTM for temporal dependencies and positional encoding for spatial context(P-LSTM). P-LSTM is designed to effectively learn compliant control strategies from human demonstrations. To account for structural differences between humans and robots, safety constraints are incorporated into POC planner to avoid potential collisions. We validate the CCCM framework through both simulated and real-world ball-catching scenarios, achieving a success rate of 98.70% in simulation, 92.59% in real-world tests, and a 33.2% reduction in impact torques.


Like a Martial Arts Dodge: Safe Expeditious Whole-Body Control of Mobile Manipulators for Collision Avoidance

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

In the control task of mobile manipulators(MM), achieving efficient and agile obstacle avoidance in dynamic environments is challenging. In this letter, we present a safe expeditious whole-body(SEWB) control for MMs that ensures both external and internal collision-free. SEWB is constructed by a two-layer optimization structure. Firstly, control barrier functions(CBFs) are employed for a MM to establish initial safety constraints. Moreover, to resolve the pseudo-equilibrium problem of CBFs and improve avoidance agility, we propose a novel sub-optimization called adaptive cyclic inequality(ACI). ACI considers obstacle positions, velocities, and predefined directions to generate directional constraints. Then, we combine CBF and ACI to decompose safety constraints alongside an equality constraint for expectation control. Considering all these constraints, we formulate a quadratic programming(QP) as our primary optimization. In the QP cost function, we account for the motion accuracy differences between the base and manipulator, as well as obstacle influences, to achieve optimized motion. We validate the effectiveness of our SEWB control in avoiding collision and reaching target points through simulations and real-world experiments, particularly in challenging scenarios that involve fast-moving obstacles. SEWB has been proven to achieve whole-body collision-free and improve avoidance agility, similar to a "martial arts dodge".