Ziyuan Jiao1*, Zeyu Zhang1*, Xin Jiang3, David Han2, Song-Chun Zhu1, Yixin Zhu1 , Hangxin Liu1
1 UCLA Center for Vision, Cognition, Learning and Autonomy2 Drexel University, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering3 UCLA Electrical and Computer Engineering* equal contributionWe construct a Virtual Kinematic Chain (VKC) that readily consolidates the kinematics of the mobile base, the arm, and the object to be manipulated in mobile manipulations. Accordingly, a mobile manipulation task is represented by altering the state of the constructed VKC, which can be converted to a motion planning problem, formulated, and solved by trajectory optimization. This new VKC perspective of mobile manipulation allows a service robot to (i) produce well-coordinated motions, suitable for complex household environments, and (ii) perform intricate multi-step tasks while interacting with multiple objects without an explicit definition of intermediate goals. In simulated experiments, we validate these advantages by comparing the VKC-based approach with baselines that solely optimize individual components. The results manifest that VKC-based joint modeling and planning promote task success rates and produce more efficient trajectories. The paper can be found here.
@inproceedings{jiao2021consolidated,
title={Consolidating Kinematic Models to Promote Coordinated Mobile Manipulations},
author={Jiao, Ziyuan and Zhang, Zeyu and Jiang, Xin and Han, David and Zhu, Song-Chun and Zhu, Yixin and Liu, Hangxin},
booktitle=IROS,
year={2021},
}