Kavraki Lab

Physical and Biological Computing

Keywords:

Abstract:

For assembly tasks parts often have to be oriented before
they can be put in an assembly. The results presented in
this paper are a component of the automated design of parts
orienting devices. The focus is on orienting parts with
minimal sensing and manipulation. We present a new approach
to parts orienting through the manipulation of pose
distributions. Through dynamic simulation we can determine
the pose distribution for an object being dropped from an
arbitrary height on an arbitrary surface. By varying the
drop height and the shape of the support surface we can
find the initial conditions that will result in a pose
distribution with minimal entropy. We are trying to
uniquely orient a part with high probability just by
varying the initial conditions. We will derive a condition
on the pose and velocity of a simple planar object in
contact with a sloped surface that will allow us to quickly
determine the final resting configuration of the object.
This condition can then be used to quickly compute the pose
distribution. We also present simulation and experimental
results that show how dynamic simulation can be used to
find optimal shapes and drop heights for a given part.