CSEE Seminar Series - Robotic Manipulation: Beyond Pick-and-Place

There are striking differences between human manipulation capabilities and state-of-the-art robotic manipulation. First, we humans are capable of a wide variety of manipulation skills, e.g. pushing, pulling, throwing, and tumbling the objects around us, whereas robotic manipulation is extremely limited, mostly to grasping actions. Second, we humans can plan and execute long sequences of manipulation actions to reach a high-level goal, such as assembling a piece of furniture, whereas robots are limited in their planning and execution capabilities constraining them to short sequences of simple pick-and-place operations.

In this talk Dr Mehmet Dogar will present his research addressing these limitations of robotic manipulation. First, he will focus on using physics-based reasoning to add to a robot’s repertoire of manipulation skills. Particularly, he will talk about using pushing actions in environments with multiple objects and multiple contacts. Second, he will talk about planning long sequences of manipulation actions for multi-robot and human-robot teams. Particularly, he will talk about planning for forceful assembly/manufacturing actions such as drilling, cutting, and fastening collaboratively.