Thesis manuscript

Dissertation | Defense slides (without videos ~ 9M) | Defense slides (full ~ 93M)

Abstract

This thesis tackles the manipulation planning for documented objects. The difficulty of the problem is the coupling of a symbolic and a geometrical problem. Classical approaches combine task and motion planning. They are hard to implement and time consuming. This approach is different on three aspects.

The first aspect is a theoretical framework to model admissible motions of the robot and objects. This model uses constraints to link symbolic task and motions achieving such task. A graph of constraint models the manipulation rules. A planning algorithm using this graph is proposed.

The second aspect is the handling of constrained motion. In manipulation planning, an abstract definition of numerical constraint is necessary. A continuity criterion for Newton-Raphson methods is proposed to ensure the continuity of trajectories in sub-manifolds.

The last aspect is object documentation. Some information, easy to define for human beings, greatly speeds up the search. This documentation, specific to each object and end-effector, is used to generate a graph of constraint, easing the problem specification and resolution.

Key words

Manipulation planning, Constrained planning, Continuous trajectory generation, Affordance, Documented objects

Chapters

A summary of each chapter is available (only in French so far).

1. State of the art
   • Motion planning
   • Task planning
   • Manipulation planning
2. Constrained motion planning
   • Notations and definitions
   • Continuous path on manifolds
   • Static stability
3. Manipulation planner
   • Constraint Graph
   • Crossed foliation issue
   • Generalized reduction property
   • Narrow passages
4. Affordance
   • Documented objects
   • Constraint graph generation
5. Result
   
   • Humanoid Path Planner
   • Manipulator arms
   • Humanoid robots