Lattice-Based Shape Tracking and Servoing of Elastic Objects

In this article, we propose a general unified tracking-servoing approach for controlling the shape of elastic deformable objects using robotic arms. Our approach works by forming a lattice around the object, binding the object to the lattice, and tracking and servoing the lattice instead of the object. This makes our approach have full control over the deformation of elastic deformable objects of any general form (linear, thin-shell, and volumetric) in 3-D space. Furthermore, it decouples the runtime complexity of the approach from the objects' geometric complexity. Our approach is based on the as-rigid-as-possible deformation model. It requires no mechanical parameter of the object to be known and can drive the object toward desired shapes through large deformations. The inputs to our approach are the point cloud of the object's surface in its rest shape and the point cloud captured by a 3-D camera in each frame. Overall, our approach is more broadly applicable than existing approaches. We validate the efficiency of our approach through numerous experiments with elastic deformable objects of various shapes and materials (paper, rubber, plastic, and foam).