Experimental Approach on Deformable Object Manipulation Inspired by the Handling of a Pizza Peel*

This paper discusses a non-prehensile dynamic manipulation of a deformable object inspired by the handling mechanism of pizza chef. The chef handles a tool called “pizza peel” where a plate is attached at the tip of a bar, and he remotely manipulates a pizza on the plate. We found that he aggressively utilizes only two DOFs (degrees of freedom) from the remote handling location during manipulation: translation along the bar and rotation about the bar. Applying this handling mechanism to the robot system, we first show how to rotate an object by using the two DOFs of plate motion. We then reveal that the deformation of the object generated by dynamic effects can drastically contribute to high-speed and stable rotation, just like human steps for turn on the floor. By using the experimental system composed of a high-speed manipulator and a high-speed vision, we show that a deformable object can rotate faster than a rigid object with the same mass, shape, and friction property.