Classifying compliant manipulation tasks for automated planning in robotics

Abstract

Many household chores and industrial manufacturing tasks require a certain compliant behavior to make deliberate physical contact with the environment. This compliant behavior can be implemented by modern robotic manipulators. However, in order to plan the task execution, a robot requires generic process models of these tasks which can be adapted to different domains and varying environmental conditions. In this work we propose a classification of compliant manipulation tasks meeting these requirements, to derive related actions for automated planning. We also present a classification for the sub-category of wiping tasks, which are most common and of great importance in service robotics. We categorize actions from an object-centric perspective to make them independent of any specific robot kinematics. The aim of the proposed taxonomy is to guide robotic programmers to develop generic actions for any kind of robotic systems in arbitrary domains.