Vision-Based Robotic Comanipulation for Deforming Cables

Although deformable linear objects (DLOs), such as cables, are widely used in the majority of life fields and activities, the robotic manipulation of these objects is considerably more complex compared to the rigid-body manipulation and still an open challenge. In this paper, we introduce a new framework using two robotic arms cooperatively manipulating a DLO from an initial shape to a desired one. Based on visual servoing and computer vision techniques, a perception approach is proposed to detect and sample the DLO as a set of virtual feature points. Then a manipulation planning approach is introduced to map between the motion of the manipulators end effectors and the DLO points by a Jacobian matrix. To avoid excessive stretching of the DLO, the planning approach generates a path for each DLO point forming profiles between the initial and desired shapes. It is guaranteed that all these intershape profiles are reachable and maintain the cable length constraint. The framework and the aforementioned approaches are validated in real-life experiments.