Jesse Haviland, Niko Sünderhauf, and Peter Corke

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), accepted January 2022.

Preprint Avaliable Here

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We present the design and implementation of a taskable reactive mobile manipulation system. Contrary to related work, we treat the arm and base degrees of freedom as a holistic structure which greatly improves the speed and fluidity of the resulting motion. At the core of this approach is a robust and reactive motion controller which can achieve a desired end-effector pose while avoiding joint position and velocity limits, and ensuring the mobile manipulator is manoeuvrable throughout the trajectory. This can support sensor-based behaviours such as closed-loop visual grasping. As no planning is involved in our approach, the robot is never stationary thinking about what to do next. We show the versatility of our holistic motion controller by implementing a pick and place system using behaviour trees and demonstrate this task on a 9-degree-of-freedom mobile manipulator. Additionally, we provide an open-source implementation of our motion controller for both non-holonomic and omnidirectional mobile manipulators.

This approach can be used on both holonomic and omnidirectional mobile manipualtors. In the video below, we show it working on a 9 degree-of-freedom mobile manipualtor.




How do I use it?

We have a created a robotics Python library called Robotics Toolbox for Python which allows our algorithm to be used an any robot. The following examples uses our Swift simulator.

Install Robotics Toolbox for Python and Swift using

pip3 install roboticstoolbox-python

Position-Based Servoing Example on a non-holonomic mobile manipulator

import swift
import roboticstoolbox as rtb
import spatialgeometry as sg
import spatialmath as sm
import qpsolvers as qp
import numpy as np
import math


def step_robot(r: rtb.ERobot, Tep):

    wTe = r.fkine(r.q)

    eTep = np.linalg.inv(wTe) @ Tep

    # Spatial error
    et = np.sum(np.abs(eTep[:3, -1]))

    # Gain term (lambda) for control minimisation
    Y = 0.01

    # Quadratic component of objective function
    Q = np.eye(r.n + 6)

    # Joint velocity component of Q
    Q[: r.n, : r.n] *= Y
    Q[:2, :2] *= 1.0 / et

    # Slack component of Q
    Q[r.n :, r.n :] = (1.0 / et) * np.eye(6)

    v, _ = rtb.p_servo(wTe, Tep, 1.5)

    v[3:] *= 1.3

    # The equality contraints
    Aeq = np.c_[r.jacobe(r.q), np.eye(6)]
    beq = v.reshape((6,))

    # The inequality constraints for joint limit avoidance
    Ain = np.zeros((r.n + 6, r.n + 6))
    bin = np.zeros(r.n + 6)

    # The minimum angle (in radians) in which the joint is allowed to approach
    # to its limit
    ps = 0.1

    # The influence angle (in radians) in which the velocity damper
    # becomes active
    pi = 0.9

    # Form the joint limit velocity damper
    Ain[: r.n, : r.n], bin[: r.n] = r.joint_velocity_damper(ps, pi, r.n)

    # Linear component of objective function: the manipulability Jacobian
    c = np.concatenate(
        (np.zeros(2), -r.jacobm(start=r.links[4]).reshape((r.n - 2,)), np.zeros(6))
    )

    # Get base to face end-effector
     = 0.5
    bTe = r.fkine(r.q, include_base=False).A
    θε = math.atan2(bTe[1, -1], bTe[0, -1])
    ε =  * θε
    c[0] = -ε

    # The lower and upper bounds on the joint velocity and slack variable
    lb = -np.r_[r.qdlim[: r.n], 10 * np.ones(6)]
    ub = np.r_[r.qdlim[: r.n], 10 * np.ones(6)]

    # Solve for the joint velocities dq
    qd = qp.solve_qp(Q, c, Ain, bin, Aeq, beq, lb=lb, ub=ub)
    qd = qd[: r.n]

    if et > 0.5:
        qd *= 0.7 / et
    else:
        qd *= 1.4

    if et < 0.02:
        return True, qd
    else:
        return False, qd


env = swift.Swift()
env.launch(realtime=True)

ax_goal = sg.Axes(0.1)
env.add(ax_goal)

frankie = rtb.models.Frankie()
frankie.q = frankie.qr
env.add(frankie)

arrived = False
dt = 0.025

# Behind
env.set_camera_pose([-2, 3, 0.7], [-2, 0.0, 0.5])
wTep = frankie.fkine(frankie.q) * sm.SE3.Rz(np.pi)
wTep.A[:3, :3] = np.diag([-1, 1, -1])
wTep.A[0, -1] -= 4.0
wTep.A[2, -1] -= 0.25
ax_goal.T = wTep
env.step()


while not arrived:

    arrived, frankie.qd = step_robot(frankie, wTep.A)
    env.step(dt)

    # Reset bases
    base_new = frankie.fkine(frankie._q, end=frankie.links[2])
    frankie._T = base_new.A
    frankie.q[:2] = 0

env.hold()

Position-Based Servoing Example on an omnidirectional mobile manipulator

import swift
import roboticstoolbox as rtb
import spatialgeometry as sg
import spatialmath as sm
import qpsolvers as qp
import numpy as np
import math


def step_robot(r: rtb.ERobot, Tep):

    wTe = r.fkine(r.q)

    eTep = np.linalg.inv(wTe) @ Tep

    # Spatial error
    et = np.sum(np.abs(eTep[:3, -1]))

    # Gain term (lambda) for control minimisation
    Y = 0.01

    # Quadratic component of objective function
    Q = np.eye(r.n + 6)

    # Joint velocity component of Q
    Q[: r.n, : r.n] *= Y
    Q[:3, :3] *= 1.0 / et

    # Slack component of Q
    Q[r.n :, r.n :] = (1.0 / et) * np.eye(6)

    v, _ = rtb.p_servo(wTe, Tep, 1.5)

    v[3:] *= 1.3

    # The equality contraints
    Aeq = np.c_[r.jacobe(r.q), np.eye(6)]
    beq = v.reshape((6,))

    # The inequality constraints for joint limit avoidance
    Ain = np.zeros((r.n + 6, r.n + 6))
    bin = np.zeros(r.n + 6)

    # The minimum angle (in radians) in which the joint is allowed to approach
    # to its limit
    ps = 0.1

    # The influence angle (in radians) in which the velocity damper
    # becomes active
    pi = 0.9

    # Form the joint limit velocity damper
    Ain[: r.n, : r.n], bin[: r.n] = r.joint_velocity_damper(ps, pi, r.n)

    # Linear component of objective function: the manipulability Jacobian
    c = np.concatenate(
        (np.zeros(3), -r.jacobm(start=r.links[5]).reshape((r.n - 3,)), np.zeros(6))
    )

    # Get base to face end-effector
     = 0.5
    bTe = r.fkine(r.q, include_base=False).A
    θε = math.atan2(bTe[1, -1], bTe[0, -1])
    ε =  * θε
    c[0] = -ε

    # The lower and upper bounds on the joint velocity and slack variable
    lb = -np.r_[r.qdlim[: r.n], 10 * np.ones(6)]
    ub = np.r_[r.qdlim[: r.n], 10 * np.ones(6)]

    # Solve for the joint velocities dq
    qd = qp.solve_qp(Q, c, Ain, bin, Aeq, beq, lb=lb, ub=ub)
    qd = qd[: r.n]

    if et > 0.5:
        qd *= 0.7 / et
    else:
        qd *= 1.4

    if et < 0.02:
        return True, qd
    else:
        return False, qd


env = swift.Swift()
env.launch(realtime=True)

ax_goal = sg.Axes(0.1)
env.add(ax_goal)

frankie = rtb.models.FrankieOmni()
frankie.q = frankie.qr
env.add(frankie)

arrived = False
dt = 0.025

# Behind
env.set_camera_pose([-2, 3, 0.7], [-2, 0.0, 0.5])
wTep = frankie.fkine(frankie.q) * sm.SE3.Rz(np.pi)
wTep.A[:3, :3] = np.diag([-1, 1, -1])
wTep.A[0, -1] -= 4.0
wTep.A[2, -1] -= 0.25
ax_goal.T = wTep
env.step()


while not arrived:

    arrived, frankie.qd = step_robot(frankie, wTep.A)
    env.step(dt)

    # Reset bases
    base_new = frankie.fkine(frankie._q, end=frankie.links[3]).A
    frankie._T = base_new
    frankie.q[:3] = 0

env.hold()

Citation

If you use this work, please cite:

@article{haviland2022holistic,
  author={J. {Haviland} and N. {Sünderhauf} and P. {Corke}},
  journal={IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters}, 
  title={A Holistic Approach to Reactive Mobile Manipulation},
  year={2022},
  volume={7},
  number={2},
  pages={3122-3129},
  doi={10.1109/LRA.2022.3146554}}
}

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Queensland University of Technology Centre for Robotics (QCR).

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