Grasp Planner

Overview

The Easy Manipulation Deployment Grasp Planner is an Algorithmic Based Point Cloud Grasp Planner that provides a 4 DOF Grasp Pose for both Multifinger End Effectors and Suction Array End Effectors.

Benefits of EMD Grasp Planner

The Grasp Planner aims to eliminate the following issues that users would face when deploying Machine Learning based Grasp Planners:

1. Long training times and tedious Dataset acquisition and labelling

Current datasets available such as the Cornell Grasping Dataset and Jacquard Grasping Dataset generally account for two finger grippers and is training on general objects. For custom use cases, datasets need to be generated and hand labelled which requires huge amount of time and manual labour. Semantic description of multifinger grippers and suction arrays may be hard to determine as well.

The Grasp Planner presented in this ROS2 package requires zero datasets and training, and supports multifingered parallel grippers as well as suction cup arrays.

2. Lack of On-The-Fly End Effector Switching

In high mix, low volume pick-and-place scenarios, different end effectors may be needed for different types of objects. Changing of end effectors would then mean that the user would need to collect a whole new dataset, relabel and retrain the dataset and models before use.

The Grasp Planner presented in this ROS2 package allows for on-the-fly end effector switching through a simple configuration file that is highly customizable and understandable.

Before running the Grasp Planner

Recommended information to read before running the Grasp Planner

• Grasp Planning Methodology
  • Grasp planning methodologies
• Grasp Planner Configuration File
  • Grasp Planner General Parameters
  • Grasp Planner Finger Parameters
  • Grasp Planner Suction Parameters
  • Sample configuration yaml file

Running the Grasp Planner

• Running the Grasp Planner
  • Example Grasp Planning Output:

Useful information

Information that you may need for further customization of the package.

• Grasp Planner Input Message Types
  • Direct Camera Input
  • EPD Input
  • Which EMD Workflow to choose?
  • Which EMD Workflow to choose (TLDR)?
• Grasp Planner Output Message Types
  • GraspRequest.srv
  • GraspTarget.msg
  • GraspMethod.msg

Acknowledgements

Initial inspiration for grasp planning algorithim was provided by the following paper, and have been repurposed to support multiple fingers as well as suction cup arrays

Fast Geometry-based Computation of Grasping Points on Three-dimensional Point Clouds