Vision-Based Contact Point Selection for the Fully Non-Fixed Contact Manipulation of Deformable Objects

Most of the research on deformable objects manipulation (DOM) is under the assumption of fixed contact (FC). Although there are some attempts to break this assumption, research on DOM with the fully non-fixed contact (FNFC), which refers that the object is not fixedly connected to both the end-effector and the surrounding environment, is still in its infancy. In this letter, we propose an optimization-based strategy of contact point selection in the condition of FNFC according to the assessment of the surrounding environment and the task requirements. Two indexes are designed to quantify contact stability and operation efficiency, respectively, which can be used to form an optimization problem for obtaining the optimal manipulation point (MP). Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm of contact point selection is validated by experimental results.