RICE: Reactive Interaction Controller for Cluttered Canopy Environment

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Parayil, Nidhi Homey, Peynot, Thierry, Lehnert, Chris
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Parayil, Nidhi Homey
Peynot, Thierry
Lehnert, Chris
author_facet Parayil, Nidhi Homey
Peynot, Thierry
Lehnert, Chris
contents Robotic navigation in dense, cluttered environments such as agricultural canopies presents significant challenges due to physical and visual occlusion caused by leaves and branches. Traditional vision-based or model-dependent approaches often fail in these settings, where physical interaction without damaging foliage and branches is necessary to reach a target. We present a novel reactive controller that enables safe navigation for a robotic arm in a contact-rich, cluttered, deformable environment using end-effector position and real-time tactile feedback. Our proposed framework's interaction strategy is based on a trade-off between minimizing disturbance by maneuvering around obstacles and pushing through them to move towards the target. We show that over 35 trials in 3 experimental plant setups with an occluded target, the proposed controller successfully reached the target in all trials without breaking any branch and outperformed the state-of-the-art model-free controller in robustness and adaptability. This work lays the foundation for safe, adaptive interaction in cluttered, contact-rich deformable environments, enabling future agricultural tasks such as pruning and harvesting in plant canopies.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_10383
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle RICE: Reactive Interaction Controller for Cluttered Canopy Environment
Parayil, Nidhi Homey
Peynot, Thierry
Lehnert, Chris
Robotics
Systems and Control
Robotic navigation in dense, cluttered environments such as agricultural canopies presents significant challenges due to physical and visual occlusion caused by leaves and branches. Traditional vision-based or model-dependent approaches often fail in these settings, where physical interaction without damaging foliage and branches is necessary to reach a target. We present a novel reactive controller that enables safe navigation for a robotic arm in a contact-rich, cluttered, deformable environment using end-effector position and real-time tactile feedback. Our proposed framework's interaction strategy is based on a trade-off between minimizing disturbance by maneuvering around obstacles and pushing through them to move towards the target. We show that over 35 trials in 3 experimental plant setups with an occluded target, the proposed controller successfully reached the target in all trials without breaking any branch and outperformed the state-of-the-art model-free controller in robustness and adaptability. This work lays the foundation for safe, adaptive interaction in cluttered, contact-rich deformable environments, enabling future agricultural tasks such as pruning and harvesting in plant canopies.
title RICE: Reactive Interaction Controller for Cluttered Canopy Environment
topic Robotics
Systems and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.10383