Abstract
In this article, we define “robotic contact juggling” to be the purposeful control of the motion of a 3-D smooth object as it rolls freely on a motion-controlled robot manipulator, or “hand.” While specific examples of robotic contact juggling have been studied before, in this article, we provide the first general for- mulation and solution method for the case of an arbitrary smooth object in a single-point rolling contact on an arbitrary smooth hand. Our formulation splits the problem into four subproblems: deriving the second-order rolling kinematics; deriving the 3-D rolling dynamics; planning rolling motions that satisfy the rolling dynamics and achieve the desired goal; and stabilization of planned rolling trajectories. The theoretical results are demonstrated in 3-D simulations and 2-D experiments using feedback from a high-speed vision system.