Tracking and Control of Multiple Objects during Non-Prehensile Manipulation in Clutter

Abstract

This paper introduces a method for 6D pose tracking and control of multiple objects during non-prehensile manipulation by a robot. The tracking system estimates objects’ poses by integrating physics predictions, derived from robotic joint state information, with visual inputs from an RGB-D camera. Specifically, the methodology is based on particle filtering, which fuses control information from the robot as an input for each particle movement and with real-time camera observations to track the pose of objects. Comparative analyses reveal that this physics-based approach substantially improves pose tracking accuracy over baseline methods that rely solely on visual data, particularly during manipulation in clutter, where occlusions are a frequent problem. The tracking system is integrated with a model predictive control approach which shows that the probabilistic nature of our tracking system can help robust manipulation planning and control of multiple objects in clutter, even under heavy occlusions.

Citing

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@article{xu2025tro,
  title={Tracking and Control of Multiple Objects during Non-Prehensile Manipulation in Clutter},
  author={Xu, Zisong and Papallas, Rafael and Modisett, Jaina and Billeter, Markus and Dogar, Mehmet R},
  journal={IEEE Transactions on Robotics},
  year={2025},
  publisher={IEEE}
}