Task-Oriented Contact Optimization for Pushing Manipulation with Mobile Robots

This work addresses the problem of transporting an object along a desired planar trajectory by pushing with mobile robots. More specifically, we concentrate on establishing optimal contacts between the object and the robots to execute the given task with minimum effort. We present a task-oriented contact placement optimization strategy for object pushing that allows calculating optimal contact points minimizing the amplitude of forces required to execute the task. Exploiting the optimized contact configuration, a motion controller uses the computed contact forces in feed-forward and position error feedback terms to realize the desired trajectory tracking task. Simulations and real experiments results confirm the validity of our approach.