Optimizing the parameters of tilting surfaces in robotic workcells

Pick-and-place regrasp is an important grasp and manipulation skill for a robot to rearrange the world around it. This paper discusses how to design a tilted work surface for robotic workcells so that the robot inside the cell can improve its pick-and-place regrasps. In particular, the workcell design is guided by two heuristics, which simultaneously increase the number of stable placements of the objects to be grasped and the gripper´s manipulability. We leverage regression techniques to compute a continuous function for fitting the multiplication of these two heuristics, and then maximize the fitted function for optimizing the parameters of tilted surfaces in a workcell. Experiments on using tilted surfaces to improve the stability and manipulability of various objects validate our approach.