Automated Synthesis of Modular Manipulators’ Structure and Control for Continuous Tasks around Obstacles

Abstract

In this work, we describe an end-to-end system for automatically synthesizing correct-by-construction structure and controls for modular manipulators from high-level task specifications. We define specifications that include both continuous trajectories the end-effector must follow and constraints on the physical space (obstacles and possible locations of the base of the manipulator). In our formulation, trajectories are composed of basic shape primitives (lines, arcs, and circles) and we avoid discretizing the desired trajectory, as other approaches in the literature do. We encode the task as a set of constraints on the manipulator’s kinematics and return the manipulator’s structure and associated control to the user, if a solution is found. By solving for the continuous trajectory, as opposed to a discretized one, we ensure that the original task is satisfied. We demonstrate our approach on three different specifications, and present the resulting physical robots tracing complex trajectories in the presence of obstacles.