Force and time-optimal trajectory planning for dual-arm unilateral cooperative grasping

This paper studies the dual-arm manipulation of an object by means of two collaborative robots. The latter hold the object through limited contact areas, thus applying unilateral contact constraints. This manipulation strategy increases versatility, since it does not require specific grippers depending on the object shape and size. However, to ensure grasping stability (i.e. no slipping of the object), a suitable internal force must be prescribed to ensure the fulfillment of the static-friction condition. In this work, the trend of the internal force is included among the inputs of a time-optimal trajectory planning, in order to find the minimal internal prestress that is able to both satisfy the static-friction condition and manipulate the object in minimal time. Admittance control is used to modulate the forces exerted by the robot end-effectors on the object. An extensive experimentation, on different 6-dimensional trajectories reaching linear and angular accelerations up to 4.5 m/s2 and 7.4 rad/s2, is presented and discussed.