Manipulation planning for documented objects

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.