Learning object deformation models for robot motion planning

•We present a planning system for robots in environments with deformable objects.•A manipulation robot determines the deformation parameters of real objects.•We consider the costs of object deformations by finite element simulations.•The deformation costs are modeled using Gaussian processes for efficient planning.•Application to wheeled and manipulation robots operating in real environments.

In this paper, we address the problem of robot navigation in environments with deformable objects. The aim is to include the costs of object deformations when planning the robot’s motions and trade them off against the travel costs. We present our recently developed robotic system that is able to acquire deformation models of real objects. The robot determines the elasticity parameters by physical interaction with the object and by establishing a relation between the applied forces and the resulting surface deformations. The learned deformation models can then be used to perform physically realistic finite element simulations. This allows the planner to evaluate robot trajectories and to predict the costs of object deformations. Since finite element simulations are time-consuming, we furthermore present an approach to approximate object-specific deformation cost functions by means of Gaussian process regression. We present two real-world applications of our motion planner for a wheeled robot and a manipulation robot. As we demonstrate in real-world experiments, our system is able to estimate appropriate deformation parameters of real objects that can be used to predict future deformations. We show that our deformation cost approximation improves the efficiency of the planner by several orders of magnitude.