An optimization approach to planning for mobile manipulation

We present an optimization-based approach to grasping and path planning for mobile manipulators. We focus on pick-and-place operations, where a given object must be moved from its start configuration to its goal configuration by the robot. Given only the start and goal configurations of the object and a model of the robot and scene, our algorithm finds a grasp and a trajectory for the robot that will bring the object to its goal configuration. The algorithm consists of two phases: optimization and planning. In the optimization phase, the optimal robot configurations and grasp are found for the object in its start and goal configurations using a co-evolutionary algorithm. In the planning phase, a path is found connecting the two robot configurations found by the optimization phase using Rapidly-Exploring Random Trees (RRTs). We benchmark our algorithm and demonstrate it on a 10 DOF mobile manipulator performing complex pick-and-place tasks in simulation.