SE(3)-DiffusionFields

Learning  smooth cost functions 

for joint grasp and motion optimization through diffusion


Abstract:

Multi-objective optimization problems are ubiquitous in robotics, e.g., the optimization of a robot manipulation task requires a joint consideration of grasp pose configurations, collisions and joint limits. While some demands can be easily hand-designed, e.g., the smoothness of a trajectory, several task-specific objectives need to be learned from data. This work introduces a method for learning data-driven SE(3) cost functions as diffusion models. Diffusion models can represent highly-expressive multimodal distributions and exhibit proper gradients over the entire space due to their score-matching training objective. Learning costs as diffusion models allows their seamless integration with other costs into a single differentiable objective function, enabling joint gradient-based motion optimization. In this work, we focus on learning SE(3) diffusion models for 6DoF grasping, giving rise to a novel framework for joint grasp and motion optimization without needing to decouple grasp selection from trajectory generation. We evaluate the representation power of our SE(3) diffusion models w.r.t. classical generative models, and we showcase the superior performance of our proposed optimization framework in a series of simulated and real-world robotic manipulation tasks against representative baselines.

Visualization of Langevin Dynamics on SE(3)

Real Robot Experiments

Pick in arbitrary poses

Pick amidst occlusions

Pick-place on shelves

Experiment Videos (More videos in the Linked page)

end_end_ud.mp4

Grasp Pose generation

pick_8.mov

Pick with Occlusions

pick_reorient_103.mov

Pick and Reorient

pick_place_005.mov

Pick and Place on shelves