A heuristic method for computing caging formation of polygonal object

Abstract

An object is said to be caged when it is bounded within some confined workspace, in which it may move but cannot escape from. An object in a cage formed by multiple robots can be transported as the robot caging formation moves. Unlike traditional contact based approach, this non-prehensile transportation strategy puts much less stringent requirement on robot synchronization and object dynamics prediction. This paper proposes a heuristic method for computing a caging formation of a given polygonal object. Existing caging computation is either for a fixed number of robots or assuming unlimited number of robots. Our goal is different. The user is allowed to choose how loosely the object may move in its cage. With the given level of looseness, the proposed method computes where the robots should be placed. We also present simulation results confirming the validity of the approach.