A Tactile-based Interactive Motion Planner for Robots in Unknown Cluttered Environments

Abstract

In unknown cluttered environments with densely stacked objects, the free-motion space is extremely barren, posing significant challenges to motion planners. Collision-free planning methods often suffer from catastrophic failures due to unexpected collisions and motion obstructions. To address this issue, this paper proposes an interactive motion planning framework (I-MP), based on a perception-motion loop. This framework empowers robots to autonomously model and reason about contact models, which in turn enables safe expansion of the free-motion space. Specifically, the robot utilizes multimodal tactile perception to acquire stimulus-response signal pairs. This enables real-time identification of objects' mechanical properties and the subsequent construction of contact models. These models are integrated as computational constraints into a reactive planner. Based on fixed-point theorems, the planner computes the spatial state toward the target in real time, thus avoiding the computational burden associated with extrapolating on high-dimensional interaction models. Furthermore, high-dimensional interaction features are linearly superposed in Cartesian space in the form of energy, and the controller achieves trajectory tracking by solving the energy gradient from the current state to the planned state. The experimental results showed that at cruising speeds ranging from 0.01 to 0.07 $m/s$, the robot's initial contact force with objects remained stable at 1.0 +- 0.7 N. In the cabinet scenario test where collision-free trajectories were unavailable, I-MP expanded the free motion space by 37.5 % through active interaction, successfully completing the environmental exploration task.