Bridging Locomotion and Manipulation Using Reconfigurable Robotic Limbs via Reinforcement Learning

Sun，Haoran1,2; Yang，Linhan1,2; Gu，Yuping1,2; Pan，Jia2; Wan，Fang3,4; Song，Chaoyang1,5

2023-08-01

10.3390/biomimetics8040364

Biomimetics   Impact Factor & Quartile

2313-7673

Locomotion and manipulation are two essential skills in robotics but are often divided or decoupled into two separate problems. It is widely accepted that the topological duality between multi-legged locomotion and multi-fingered manipulation shares an intrinsic model. However, a lack of research remains to identify the data-driven evidence for further research. This paper explores a unified formulation of the loco-manipulation problem using reinforcement learning (RL) by reconfiguring robotic limbs with an overconstrained design into multi-legged and multi-fingered robots. Such design reconfiguration allows for adopting a co-training architecture for reinforcement learning towards a unified loco-manipulation policy. As a result, we find data-driven evidence to support the transferability between locomotion and manipulation skills using a single RL policy with a multilayer perceptron or graph neural network. We also demonstrate the Sim2Real transfer of the learned loco-manipulation skills in a robotic prototype. This work expands the knowledge frontiers on loco-manipulation transferability with learning-based evidence applied in a novel platform with overconstrained robotic limbs.

loco-manipulation reconfigurable robot reinforcement learning

English

First ; Corresponding

National Natural Science Foundation of China[62206119];Science, Technology and Innovation Commission of Shenzhen Municipality[JCYJ20220818100417038];Science, Technology and Innovation Commission of Shenzhen Municipality[ZDSYS20220527171403009];

2-s2.0-85169043450

Scopus

1.Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering,Southern University of Science and Technology,Shenzhen,518055,China
2.Department of Computer Science,The University of Hong Kong,Hong Kong
3.Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Flexible Manufacturing and Robotics,Southern University of Science and Technology,Shenzhen,518055,China
4.School of Design,Southern University of Science and Technology,Shenzhen,518055,China
5.Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Human-Augmentation and Rehabilitation Robotics in Universities,Southern University of Science and Technology,Shenzhen,518055,China

Sun，Haoran,Yang，Linhan,Gu，Yuping,et al. Bridging Locomotion and Manipulation Using Reconfigurable Robotic Limbs via Reinforcement Learning[J]. Biomimetics,2023,8(4).

Sun，Haoran,Yang，Linhan,Gu，Yuping,Pan，Jia,Wan，Fang,&Song，Chaoyang.(2023).Bridging Locomotion and Manipulation Using Reconfigurable Robotic Limbs via Reinforcement Learning.Biomimetics,8(4).

Sun，Haoran,et al."Bridging Locomotion and Manipulation Using Reconfigurable Robotic Limbs via Reinforcement Learning".Biomimetics 8.4(2023).