Toward a user-guided manipulation framework for high-DOF robots with limited communication

Calder Phillips-Grafflin, Nicholas Alunni, Halit Bener Suay, Jim Mainprice, Daniel M. Lofaro, Dmitry Berenson, Sonia Chernova, Robert W. Lindeman, Paul Y. Oh

Abstract: This paper presents our progress toward a user-guided manipulation framework for high degree-of-freedom robots operating in environments with limited communication. The system we propose consists of three components: (1) a user-guided perception interface that assists the user in providing task-level commands to the robot, (2) planning algorithms that autonomously generate robot motion while obeying relevant constraints, and (3) a trajectory execution and monitoring system which detects errors in execution. We report quantitative experiments performed on these three components and qualitative experiments of the entire pipeline with the PR2 robot turning a valve for the DARPA robotics challenge. We also describe how the framework was ported to the Hubo2+ robot with minimal changes which demonstrates its applicability to different types of robots.