Towards Solutions of Manipulation Tasks via Optimal Control of Projected Dynamical Systems

Abstract: We introduce a modeling framework for manipulation planning based on the formulation of the dynamics as a projected dynamical system. This method uses implicit signed distance functions and their gradients to formulate an equivalent gradient complementarity system. The optimal control problem is then solved via a direct method, discretized using finite-elements with switch detection. An extension to this approach is provided in the form of a friction formulation commonly used in quasi-static models. We show that this approach is able to generate trajectories for problems including multiple pushers, friction, and non-convex objects modeled as unions of convex ellipsoids with reasonable computational effort.