Learning Goal-Directed Object Pushing in Cluttered Scenes with Location-Based Attention




Authors:

N. Dengler, J. Del Aguila Ferrandis, J. Moura, S. Vijayakumar, M. Bennewitz

Type:

Conference Proceeding

Published in:

Arxiv Pre-print

Year:

2025

Related Projects:

Embodied AI at LAMARR Institute for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, RePAIR - Reconstructing the Past: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Meet Cultural Heritage

Links:

PreprintVideo

BibTex String

@article{dengler2025learning,
title={Learning Goal-Directed Object Pushing in Cluttered Scenes with Location-Based Attention},
author={Dengler, Nils and Ferrandis, Juan Del Aguila and Moura, Jo{\~a}o and Vijayakumar, Sethu and Bennewitz, Maren},
journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2403.17667},
year={2025}
}

Topic

Abstract:

In complex scenarios where typical pick-and-place techniques are insufficient, often non-prehensile manipulation can ensure that a robot is able to fulfill its task. However, non-prehensile manipulation is challenging due to its underactuated nature with hybrid-dynamics, where a robot needs to reason about an object's long-term behavior and contact-switching, while being robust to contact uncertainty. The presence of clutter in the workspace further complicates this task, introducing the need to include more advanced spatial analysis to avoid unwanted collisions. Building upon prior work on reinforcement learning with multimodal categorical exploration for planar pushing, we propose to incorporate location-based attention to enable robust manipulation in cluttered scenes. Unlike previous approaches addressing this obstacle avoiding pushing task, our framework requires no predefined global paths and considers the desired target orientation of the manipulated object. Experimental results in simulation as well as with a real KUKA iiwa robot arm demonstrate that our learned policy manipulates objects successfully while avoiding collisions through complex obstacle configurations, including dynamic obstacles, to reach the desired target pose.