Planning simultaneous perception and manipulation

This thesis is concerned with deriving planning algorithms for robot manipulators. Manipulation has two effects, the robot has a physical effect on the object, and it also acquires information about the object. This thesis presents algorithms that treat both problems.
First, I present an extension of the well-known piano mover’s problem where a robot pushing an object must plan its movements as well as those of the object. This requires simultaneous planning in the joint space of the robot and the configuration space of the object, in contrast to the original problem which only requires planning in the latter space. The effects of a robot action on the object configuration are determined by the non-invertible rigid body mechanics. To solve this a two-level planner is presented that coordinates planning in each space.
Second, I consider planning under uncertainty and in particular planning for information effects. I consider the case where a robot has to reach and grasp an object under pose uncertainty caused by shape incompleteness. The main novel outcome is to enable tactile information gain planning for a dexterous, highdegree of freedom manipulator with non- Gaussian pose uncertainty. The method is demonstrated in trials with both simulated and real robots.