Dynamic object goal pushing with mobile manipulators through model-free constrained reinforcement learning

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Dadiotis, Ioannis, Mittal, Mayank, Tsagarakis, Nikos, Hutter, Marco
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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_version_ 1866911223977607168
author Dadiotis, Ioannis
Mittal, Mayank
Tsagarakis, Nikos
Hutter, Marco
author_facet Dadiotis, Ioannis
Mittal, Mayank
Tsagarakis, Nikos
Hutter, Marco
contents Non-prehensile pushing to move and reorient objects to a goal is a versatile loco-manipulation skill. In the real world, the object's physical properties and friction with the floor contain significant uncertainties, which makes the task challenging for a mobile manipulator. In this paper, we develop a learning-based controller for a mobile manipulator to move an unknown object to a desired position and yaw orientation through a sequence of pushing actions. The proposed controller for the robotic arm and the mobile base motion is trained using a constrained Reinforcement Learning (RL) formulation. We demonstrate its capability in experiments with a quadrupedal robot equipped with an arm. The learned policy achieves a success rate of 91.35% in simulation and at least 80% on hardware in challenging scenarios. Through our extensive hardware experiments, we show that the approach demonstrates high robustness against unknown objects of different masses, materials, sizes, and shapes. It reactively discovers the pushing location and direction, thus achieving contact-rich behavior while observing only the pose of the object. Additionally, we demonstrate the adaptive behavior of the learned policy towards preventing the object from toppling.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_01546
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Dynamic object goal pushing with mobile manipulators through model-free constrained reinforcement learning
Dadiotis, Ioannis
Mittal, Mayank
Tsagarakis, Nikos
Hutter, Marco
Robotics
Machine Learning
Systems and Control
Non-prehensile pushing to move and reorient objects to a goal is a versatile loco-manipulation skill. In the real world, the object's physical properties and friction with the floor contain significant uncertainties, which makes the task challenging for a mobile manipulator. In this paper, we develop a learning-based controller for a mobile manipulator to move an unknown object to a desired position and yaw orientation through a sequence of pushing actions. The proposed controller for the robotic arm and the mobile base motion is trained using a constrained Reinforcement Learning (RL) formulation. We demonstrate its capability in experiments with a quadrupedal robot equipped with an arm. The learned policy achieves a success rate of 91.35% in simulation and at least 80% on hardware in challenging scenarios. Through our extensive hardware experiments, we show that the approach demonstrates high robustness against unknown objects of different masses, materials, sizes, and shapes. It reactively discovers the pushing location and direction, thus achieving contact-rich behavior while observing only the pose of the object. Additionally, we demonstrate the adaptive behavior of the learned policy towards preventing the object from toppling.
title Dynamic object goal pushing with mobile manipulators through model-free constrained reinforcement learning
topic Robotics
Machine Learning
Systems and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.01546