Robots for picking in e-commerce warehouses require rapid computing of efficient and smooth robot arm motions between varying configurations. Recent results integrate grasp analysis with arm motion planning to compute optimal smooth arm motions; however, computation times on the order of tens of seconds dominate motion times. Recent advances in deep learning allow neural networks to quickly compute these motions; however, they lack the precision required to produce kinematically and dynamically feasible motions. While infeasible, the network-computed motions approximate the optimized results. The proposed method warm starts the optimization process by using the approximate motions as a starting point from which the optimizing motion planner refines to an optimized and feasible motion with few iterations. In experiments, the proposed deep learning– based warm-started optimizing motion planner reduces compute and motion time when compared to a sampling-based asymptotically optimal motion planner and an optimizing motion planner. When applied to grasp-optimized motion planning, the results suggest that deep learning can reduce the computation time by two orders of magnitude (300×), from 29 s to 80 ms, making it practical for e-commerce warehouse picking.
@article{
title={Deep learning can accelerate grasp-optimized motion planning},
author={Ichnowski, Jeffrey and Avigal, Yahav and Satish, Vishal and Goldberg, Ken},
journal={Science Robotics},
volume={5},
number={48},
year={2020},
publisher={Science Robotics}
}