Dynamic underactuated nonprehensile manipulation

By exploiting centrifugal and Coriolis forces, simple, low-degree-of-freedom robots can control objects with more degrees-of-freedom. For example, by allowing the object to roll and slip, a one-degree-of-freedom revolute robot can take a planar object to a full-dimensional subset of its state space. We present a dynamic manipulation planner that finds manipulator trajectories to move an object from one state to another without grasping it. The trajectories have been successfully implemented on a one-degree-of-freedom direct drive arm to perform dynamic tasks such as snatching an object from a table, rolling an object on the surface of the arm, and throwing and catching.