Building Gradient by Gradient: Decentralised Energy Functions for Bimanual Robot Assembly

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Mitchell, Alexander L., Watson, Joe, Posner, Ingmar
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Mitchell, Alexander L.
Watson, Joe
Posner, Ingmar
author_facet Mitchell, Alexander L.
Watson, Joe
Posner, Ingmar
contents There are many challenges in bimanual assembly, including high-level sequencing, multi-robot coordination, and low-level, contact-rich operations such as component mating. Task and motion planning (TAMP) methods, while effective in this domain, may be prohibitively slow to converge when adapting to disturbances that require new task sequencing and optimisation. These events are common during tight-tolerance assembly, where difficult-to-model dynamics such as friction or deformation require rapid replanning and reattempts. Moreover, defining explicit task sequences for assembly can be cumbersome, limiting flexibility when task replanning is required. To simplify this planning, we introduce a decentralised gradient-based framework that uses a piecewise continuous energy function through the automatic composition of adaptive potential functions. This approach generates sub-goals using only myopic optimisation, rather than long-horizon planning. It demonstrates effectiveness at solving long-horizon tasks due to the structure and adaptivity of the energy function. We show that our approach scales to physical bimanual assembly tasks for constructing tight-tolerance assemblies. In these experiments, we discover that our gradient-based rapid replanning framework generates automatic retries, coordinated motions and autonomous handovers in an emergent fashion.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_04696
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Building Gradient by Gradient: Decentralised Energy Functions for Bimanual Robot Assembly
Mitchell, Alexander L.
Watson, Joe
Posner, Ingmar
Robotics
There are many challenges in bimanual assembly, including high-level sequencing, multi-robot coordination, and low-level, contact-rich operations such as component mating. Task and motion planning (TAMP) methods, while effective in this domain, may be prohibitively slow to converge when adapting to disturbances that require new task sequencing and optimisation. These events are common during tight-tolerance assembly, where difficult-to-model dynamics such as friction or deformation require rapid replanning and reattempts. Moreover, defining explicit task sequences for assembly can be cumbersome, limiting flexibility when task replanning is required. To simplify this planning, we introduce a decentralised gradient-based framework that uses a piecewise continuous energy function through the automatic composition of adaptive potential functions. This approach generates sub-goals using only myopic optimisation, rather than long-horizon planning. It demonstrates effectiveness at solving long-horizon tasks due to the structure and adaptivity of the energy function. We show that our approach scales to physical bimanual assembly tasks for constructing tight-tolerance assemblies. In these experiments, we discover that our gradient-based rapid replanning framework generates automatic retries, coordinated motions and autonomous handovers in an emergent fashion.
title Building Gradient by Gradient: Decentralised Energy Functions for Bimanual Robot Assembly
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.04696