Planning representations and algorithms for prehensile multi-arm manipulation

Abstract

This paper describes the topology of general multi-arm prehensile manipulation. Reasonable assumptions are applied to reduce the number of manipulation modes, which results in an explicit graphical representation for multi-arm manipulation that is computationally manageable to store and search for solution paths. In this context, it is also possible to take advantage of preprocessing steps to significantly speed up online query resolution. The approach is evaluated in simulation for multiple arms showing it is possible to quickly compute multi-arm manipulation paths of high-quality on the fly.