Towards a task planning for deformable object manipulation-formulation and computation of linear object deformation

A systematic approach to the static analysis of deformation of linear objects such as cords and ropes is presented. There exists many manipulative operations that deal with deformable objects in environments that robots are expected to take active parts, while rigid object manipulation has been a main interest in most of the task planning researches. Manipulative operations that deal with deformable objects is thus a challenging issue in task planning. In this article, we will present a static analysis of the deformation of linear objects. First, the process of manipulative operations are analyzed. Secondly, a generalized coordinate system appropriate to describe the linear object deformation is introduced. Internal energy of the object and geometric constraints imposed on it are then formulated. Deformation of the object is computed by use of nonlinear programming techniques. Finally, experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.