Reactive Whole-Body Control for Grasping Moving Objects with Mobile Manipulators

Ahmet Ercan Tekden, Francesco Gigante, Shijie Zhou, Dongxiang Li, Yasemin Bekiroglu

Keywords: Mobile manipulation, Dynamic grasping, Whole-body control, Moving object tracking

TL;DR: We propose a mobile manipulation framework for grasping moving objects that enables reactive grasp pose tracking through unified control of the base and manipulator.

Abstract: Grasping moving objects remains a challenging task for fixed manipulators due to their limited workspace, which restricts their ability to respond to object motion. This limitation becomes particularly important in human-robot collaborative scenarios. In this work, we propose a framework for grasping moving objects with a mobile manipulator that dynamically repositions its base to expand its reachable workspace and improve grasp feasibility. To coordinate the system motion, we adopt a reactive whole-body control strategy that treats the mobile base and manipulator as a unified kinematic system. As the object moves, the target pre-grasp pose is updated based on the estimated object pose, allowing the robot to track and approach a grasp-relevant target. The proposed method is validated in both simulation and real-world experiments, demonstrating the effectiveness of the unified control strategy for coordinated tracking and grasp-oriented motion generation when interacting with moving objects.

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Submission Number: 30