Object-Agnostic Dexterous Manipulation of Partially Constrained Trajectories

We address the problem of controlling a partially constrained trajectory of the manipulation frame–an arbitrary frame of reference rigidly attached to the object–as the desired motion about this frame is often underdefined. This may be apparent, for example, when the task requires control only about the translational dimensions of the manipulation frame, with disregard to the rotational dimensions. This scenario complicates the computation of the grasp frame trajectory, as the mobility of the mechanism is likely limited due to the constraints imposed by the closed kinematic chain. In this letter, we address this problem by combining a learned, object-agnostic manipulation model of the gripper with Model Predictive Control (MPC). This combination facilitates an approach to simple vision-based control of robotic hands with generalized models, enabling a single manipulation model to extend to different task requirements. By tracking the hand-object configuration through vision, the proposed framework is able to accurately control the trajectory of the manipulation frame along translational, rotational, or mixed trajectories. We provide experiments quantifying the utility of this framework, analyzing its ability to control different objects over varied horizon lengths and optimization iterations, and finally, we implement the controller on a physical system.