Precise Object Placement Using Force-Torque Feedback

Abstract: Precise object manipulation and placement is a common problem for household robots, surgery robots, and robots working on in-situ construction. Prior work using computer vision, depth sensors, and reinforcement learning lacks the ability to reactively recover from planning errors, execution errors, or sensor noise. This work introduces a method that uses force-torque sensing to robustly place objects in stable poses, even in adversarial environments. On 46 trials, our method finds success rates of 100% for basic stacking, and 17% for cases requiring adjustment.