Surface-Based Manipulation

2025-02-26

AI Summary

Traditional robotic grasping struggles with fragile, deformable, irregular, or low-friction objects due to its reliance on fingertip end-effectors constrained by force and geometric limitations, leading to unstable manipulation. This paper introduces a novel non-grasping manipulation paradigm enabled by an adjustable-pose planar end-effector that eliminates the need for clamping forces and instead exploits surface-object contact dynamics to achieve translation, rotation, and flipping. We establish, for the first time, a comprehensive closed-loop surface-driven manipulation framework integrating geometric pose planning, contact modeling, and feedback control—enabling shape-, size-, stiffness-, and deformability-agnostic operation. Experiments demonstrate high robustness across fragile, slippery, irregular, and soft objects under zero clamping force, significantly expanding the operational envelope of dexterous robotic manipulation.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Manipulation
• Computer Vision: Adversarial Attacks & Robustness
• Natural Language Processing: Safety and Robustness

Application Category

• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: The sharing economy

Abstract

Intelligence lies not only in the brain but in the body. The shape of our bodies can influence how we think and interact with the physical world. In robotics research, interacting with the physical world is crucial as it allows robots to manipulate objects in various real-life scenarios. Conventional robotic manipulation strategies mainly rely on finger-shaped end effectors. However, achieving stable grasps on fragile, deformable, irregularly shaped, or slippery objects is challenging due to difficulties in establishing stable force or geometric constraints. Here, we present surface-based manipulation strategies that diverge from classical grasping approaches, using with flat surfaces as minimalist end-effectors. By changing the position and orientation of these surfaces, objects can be translated, rotated and even flipped across the surface using closed-loop control strategies. Since this method does not rely on stable grasp, it can adapt to objects of various shapes, sizes, and stiffness levels, even enabling the manipulation the shape of deformable objects. Our results provide a new perspective for solving complex manipulation problems.

Problem

• Surface-based manipulation for robots
• Overcoming challenges in grasping irregular objects
• Using flat surfaces as end-effectors

Innovation

• Surface-based manipulation strategy
• Flat surfaces as end-effectors
• Closed-loop control for object manipulation