AUTHOR=Sanchez Jose , Mohy El Dine Kamal , Corrales Juan Antonio , Bouzgarrou Belhassen-Chedli , Mezouar Youcef TITLE=Blind Manipulation of Deformable Objects Based on Force Sensing and Finite Element Modeling JOURNAL=Frontiers in Robotics and AI VOLUME=7 YEAR=2020 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/robotics-and-ai/articles/10.3389/frobt.2020.00073 DOI=10.3389/frobt.2020.00073 ISSN=2296-9144 ABSTRACT=

In this paper, we present a novel pipeline to simultaneously estimate and manipulate the deformation of an object using only force sensing and an FEM model. The pipeline is composed of a sensor model, a deformation model and a pose controller. The sensor model computes the contact forces that are used as input to the deformation model which updates the volumetric mesh of a manipulated object. The controller then deforms the object such that a given pose on the mesh reaches a desired pose. The proposed approach is thoroughly evaluated in real experiments using a robot manipulator and a force-torque sensor to show its accuracy in estimating and manipulating deformations without the use of vision sensors.