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arXiv · 2603.12940

Coordinated Manipulation of Hybrid Deformable-Rigid Objects in Constrained Environments

Anees Peringal·Anup Teejo Mathew·Panagiotis liatsis·Federico Renda
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Abstract

Coordinated robotic manipulation of deformable linear objects (DLOs), such as ropes and cables, has been widely studied; however, handling hybrid assemblies composed of both deformable and rigid elements in constrained environments remains challenging. This work presents a quasi-static optimization-based manipulation planner that employs a strain-based Cosserat rod model, extending rigid-body formulations to hybrid deformable linear objects (hDLO). The proposed planner exploits the compliance of deformable links to maneuver through constraints while achieving task-space objectives for the object that are unreachable with rigid tools. By leveraging a differentiable model with analytically derived gradients, the method achieves up to a 33x speedup over finite-difference baselines for inverse kinetostatic(IKS) problems. Furthermore, the subsequent trajectory optimization problem, warm-started using the IKS solution, is only practically realizable via analytical derivatives. The proposed algorithm is validated in simulation on various hDLO systems and experimentally on a three-link hDLO manipulated in a constrained environment using a dual-arm robotic system. Experimental results confirm the planner's accuracy, yielding an average deformation error of approximately 3 cm (5% of the deformable link length) between the desired and measured marker positions. Finally, the proposed optimal planner is compared against a sampling-based feasibility planner adapted to the strain-based formulation. The results demonstrate the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed approach for robotic manipulation of hybrid assemblies in constrained environments.

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Anees Peringal, Anup Teejo Mathew, Panagiotis liatsis, Federico Renda. 2026-03-13. Coordinated Manipulation of Hybrid Deformable-Rigid Objects in Constrained Environments. https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.12940

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