Autonomous Excavation of Challenging Terrain using Oscillatory Primitives and Adaptive Impedance Control
<|reference_start|>Autonomous Excavation of Challenging Terrain using Oscillatory Primitives and Adaptive Impedance Control: This paper addresses the challenge of autonomous excavation of challenging terrains, in particular those that are prone to jamming and inter-particle adhesion when tackled by a standard penetrate-drag-scoop motion pattern. Inspired by human excavation strategies, our approach incorporates oscillatory rotation elements -- including swivel, twist, and dive motions -- to break up compacted, tangled grains and reduce jamming. We also present an adaptive impedance control method, the Reactive Attractor Impedance Controller (RAIC), that adapts a motion trajectory to unexpected forces during loading in a manner that tracks a trajectory closely when loads are low, but avoids excessive loads when significant resistance is met. Our method is evaluated on four terrains using a robotic arm, demonstrating improved excavation performance across multiple metrics, including volume scooped, protective stop rate, and trajectory completion percentage.<|reference_end|>
@article{franceschini2024autonomous,
    title={Autonomous Excavation of Challenging Terrain using Oscillatory
  Primitives and Adaptive Impedance Control},
    author={Noah Franceschini, Pranay Thangeda, Melkior Ornik, Kris Hauser},
    journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.18273},
    year={2024},
    archivePrefix={arXiv},
    eprint={2409.18273},
    primaryClass={cs.RO}
}