Direct Collocation for Dynamic Behaviors with Nonprehensile Contacts: Application to Flipping Burgers

Abstract

To realize robotic systems in real-world settings, e.g., in restaurants, it will be necessary to achieve dynamic manipulation of non-trivial objects. In this context, this paper discusses methodologies used to realize trajectories in a robotic arm platform; specifically, applied to flipping burgers as an example of nonprehensile object manipulation. Flipping of burgers involves a series of tasks—going to the burger location, scooping, picking up and flipping. Since the goal is to obtain these trajectories in a reasonably fast manner, we employ direct collocation based multi-segmented trajectory optimization. We will first describe the problem setup, and then describe the constraints, decision variables employed, and then, to conclude, we will demonstrate these behaviors in a 6-DOF robot experimentally.