Robotic System Architecture Design for Manipulation of 3D Deformable Objects

This paper presents a system architecture for the robotic manipulation and reshaping of 3D deformable objects. The inherent complexity of manipulating objects with evolving shapes requires the construction and efficient integration of components that are reusable and remain functional under operational scenarios that involve high variability. Such original components are developed and integrated in this paper, notably including a mapping subsystem to aggregate and analyse sensor data for extracting general manipulation and sensing heuristics, as well as a deformation modelling component to predict the effect of candidate robot actions on the shape of an object of interest. A simulation interface is further implemented on top of robotic simulators, allowing a modular creation of environments to evaluate the performance of the aforementioned components and to generate synthetic datasets of 3D deformable object ma- nipulation tasks. These general-use components are integrated with application-specific task and motion planning components in real and simulated environments.